My Pet Whale - Or Not?

These last two weeks have been busy in our classroom!  We spent time last week reading a story called Dear Mr. Blueberry, all about a little girl who is convinced she has a whale in her pond.  Her teacher, Mr. Blueberry, is convinced that there could not possibly be a whale there.  They communicate through letters, each expressing their own opinion.

Not only did we do some whale research, but we also started thinking.... would a whale make a good pet?  We brainstormed the characteristics of a good pet

 

and then shared our own reason why a whale would or wouldn't make a good pet.





Then we wrote an opinion piece, using an opening sentence, reasons with details and a closing sentence. 

 

What do you think - would a whale make a good pet?

"Snow" Much Fun in the New Year!

Happy New Year!  2015 has arrived and we are back at school ready to take on everything that winter has to offer.

This week, we used the book Snow, by Cynthia Rylant, to review figurative language and talk about the tone of a text.  Then we compared that book to another snow-themed book, called Snow Dance.

 While both books we about snow, they had very different tones and word choices.  Snow was more calm and peaceful, filled with figurative language and imagery that made for great visualizations!  Snow Dance on the other hand, was a book with rhyming lines than bounced along and made you smile and want to go out and play in the snow!

We continued the theme of snow during book groups.  Snowflake Bentley and Poppleton in Winter were the choices here. 

We also read one of our Scholastic News magazines to find out how this amazing ice-covered lighthouse was formed.  Be sure to ask your child about it - amazing!

We kept the snow going with some math and our Snow People glyphs.  The parts of each glyph tell about the person who created it.  For example, you can tell by looking at the nose if the best part of a snow day is having no school (round) or playing in the snow (triangular).  Here are some of our finished snowy friends!

We then "read" the information from the glyphs and analyzed the data. 

The snow this week definitely helped to add to our topic! Let's hope next week gives us a full five day to be able to start our adventure to the North and South poles.... I wonder what we'll find?