Campaign Speeches, Multiplication, Main Idea, & Energy

This week we wrapped up our election day activities - all that's left to do is vote tomorrow! The kids made campaign posters and then wrote campaign speeches for our two final candidates (movie and popcorn & doughnut holes). Each teacher picked one speech for each side, and then on Friday we went to the cafeteria and listened to the speeches. I don't have pictures of that because of confidentiality issues, but it was so cute to see them reading into the microphone while the others listened intently and then cheered and held up their campaign posters in support.

In science we continued working on energy. We focus on 4 types: light, heat (thermal), sound, and mechanical. We made a foldable in their science journals to define each as we watched a slide show that I created. We also have a poster. Click the photos below for links to download the slide show and the poster pieces. 

Slide show:

Poster pieces:

We also made roto-copters to practice mechanical energy and we have more projects to practice the other types of energy planned for this week. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of the roto-copters!

In reading we focused on main idea. We filled out a cute hamburger anchor chart and then the kids did one themselves. We also made a couple of cute foldables and practiced with leveled readers in small groups. I made a cute stoplight poster to give my students a visual of the difference between retelling, summarizing, and finding the main idea. Click that picture to download.

Unfortunately I didn't do a great job of taking very many pictures of our activities this week...

In math we started multiplication, and the kids are loving it! This week was just about understanding the concept of multiplication, though I also started pre-teaching multiples facts to get a jump on them. 

We practiced work out of our book during the seat work rotation of stations.

We made arrays using Cheerios!

We used Mindpoint QuizShow to review at the end of the week - what a super fun program to use with our eInstruction response pads!

We used the multiplication songs to learn our 3's, 4's, 6's, and 7's. Of course the kids are already familiar with skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's, and we discussed the rules for 1's and 0's. Each day we sing our songs and practice skip counting while we hold up fingers to represent the multiples. Click the picture to download your copy of the songs.

I made this cute multiples chart for the kids to keep in their folder. Click the picture to download!

We also used the problem solving poster to interpret word problems. Click to download.

This will be another fun, busy week! Check back next weekend for another update :)