Tiger Team: April 2012

Dear Family,

This week, we finished our group research project. Our goal was to write an expository piece about an animal that we didn't know much about. To do this, we made a plan to do some research.

After we chose the topic of penguins, we got straight to work gathering resources, finding the answers to our questions, and recording all of this new and fun information in our research booklets.

Our final product...we created tear-art penguins and on their tummies was an original expository piece written by each of us!

After revising and editing our piece, we were ready to publish.

Working hard in Writer's Workshop!

Ready for our final product!

And here are our penguins!

Next week, we will get to go through the research process again to write an expository piece about an animal of our own choosing. I wonder what kinds of animals we will choose?

We finished our unit on subtraction this week. We are using so many math vocabulary words and all sorts of different strategies to solve daily word problems, similar to the one we learned about this week.

We work in our groups during Math Workshop and each group does something special. This group created "Adding Machines," similar to the one Mrs. Maggart made at the beginning of the year. The challenge was to try and use these machines for adding AND another operation - perhaps subtraction, multiplication? We were excited for this challenge and even more excited to present our completed machines to the class.

Hard at work during Math Workshop

The was our model - Mrs. Maggart's Adding Machine named "Bob"

We had to come up with a plan of how much we would put in our machines, what they machine would add, subtract, or multiply, and then how many would come out.

We had to put on our creative "Thinking Caps" and use the materials Mrs. Maggart provided for us to make our machines.

In Science, we were in charge of caring for our school's Butterfly Garden. We brainstormed a list of ways that we could help. Then, we rolled up our sleeves, took out some tools, and worked really hard in the bright, hot sun to make our garden look fabulous!