Biweekly Update, January 29th

Reader's Workshop
We continued our study of folk tales these weeks, focusing on several versions of Cinderella from around the world. We then compared two versions of a folk tale using a Venn Diagram, thought about character traits of the good and bad characters, and came up with a list of common elements found in many different folk tales.

We also talked about how many folk tales, just as in all good writing, you find lots of dialogue and descriptions of characters' feelings. We will be taking these ideas and incorporating them into our own writing next week.

Writer's Workshop
We did our last little bit of work on our how-to books, then dove into planning out a retelling of a folk tale. Students each picked a folk tale they knew really well, then planned out how they would retell it. Some students changed the setting or characters, some changed around the point-of-view, and some changed the problem and solution. They planned out their characters, worked on describing the setting, and mapped out the story in a tiny book. On Friday, they started writing the actual story. Most writers plan and plan and plan before they start writing, and the students in 204 are no different!

Math
We are doing more work with multiplication, this time focusing on 2s, 5s, and 10s, as well as even and odd numbers. At home, you can give your student a math problem that will involve counting by these numbers, and see if your student can solve it!

We also had a few rounds of America's 7th favorite quiz show game show, Even or Odd!, in which a series of contestants vie for prizes by correctly determining if a list of increasingly-large numbers are even or odd. The prize is, as always, $7,000,000 and a new car.

Science
See our separate post for details of our work with stream tables!

Social Studies
We are studying countries! We have learned a bit about Egypt and India. If you have a world map at home, have your student locate India, Egypt, Brazil, and Watertown on the map, then point out the Amazon, Nile, and Ganges Rivers.

We did a scavenger hunt on the Culturegrams website to learn some facts about India. We also looked at some Indian art, played a kids game from India, tried writing some letters in Hindi and Gujarati, and investigated some spices, foods, and tea from India!

News and Other Information
The Halfway Bandit struck again!