Slippery slopes!

How do you stay safe while you are working on a roof? One of the most important considerations is what is on your feet! Our lab was contracted by a new local roofing company to develop recommendations for safe footwear for their employees. We used two roof models to test 5 kinds of footwear: sneakers, sandals, boots, hi-tops, and flats. One model roof surface was a wooden board to simulate a bare roof before they nail on shingles. The second roof model was a board with shingles. Here are the results of our testing:

 Shingles:

Bare wood:

Then, we had to help the roofing company again. We used what we learned from our roof shoe slide experiment to design structures that roofers can use to hold their tools and supplies when they are on a roof.

Last Week, Today: 10/23-10/27

Reader's Workshop
We continued reading informational texts this week! We:
- developed and used a rubric to score our informational text maps
- used an informational text map to analyze Gail Gibbons' book Seed to Plant.
- found examples of informational text features that authors use to make it easy for us to learn from them
- read and interpreted a new poem, "Plip, Plop, Raindrop"

Writer's Workshop
We finished our publishing process by conferring with Mr. MacLellan and making final illustrations.

Math
We continued to work on three digit addition, and had an assessment to see how our learning is progressing.
We worked on fact fluency with bar models, math mountains, and a game called "Make 10 Memory."
We started to film instructional videos about math games you can play at home!

Science
We planted bulbs in our school garden! We put them around the base of the new apple trees to help protect the trees from animal pests that don't like the smell of daffodils. We also drew careful, precise, specific, scientific illustrations of bulbs, flowers, and seeds. We pulled flowers apart to see where the seeds develop.
We thought about what kind of material you would use to build a trampoline.

Social Studies
We made maps of the school!

Morning Questions
Would you rather be a bumblebee or a squirrel?
Would you rather be a dolphin or a sea turtle?
What do you like to do on a rainy day?
Have you ever been on a bus?

Last Week, Today: 10/16 - 10/20

Reader's Workshop
We did a lot of work looking at the structure of informational texts. We identified the main idea and supporting details, used an informational text map, and developed a rubric to assess how we did. We read a number of books by Gail Gibbons, including Giant Pandas, The Boat Book, and Building a House.
We also read and interpreted a poem: "October, the Hunter's Moon".

Writer's Workshop
We are deep into revising and publishing our stories!
- Revising comes from the re- prefix, meaning "again," and vis, like in vision, so it means to look at something again
- We worked in partners to fix and identify spelling mistakes, using a dictionary to help with tricky words.
- Our partners helped us find sentences that didn't make sense, or where there was missing information. We added information with spider legs.
- We used a checklist and a writing buddy to make our stories the best they could be.

Math
You can't have ten of something in one place, so you have to regroup! We did lots of regrouping when we added 3-digit numbers together this week. We are good at regrouping in all places now.
We also analyzed the work of some imaginary students to try and figure out where they made a mistake. This helps us avoid those mistakes in our own work!

Science
Continuing our look at observable physical properties, we tested two kinds of paper towels to see which was more absorbent, and which was stronger when wet. Then, we helped a roofing company choose which shoes their workers should wear on two different roof surfaces.

Social Studies
We finished up our classroom maps, and gave each other plus/delta feedback about our work.