We dove further into our work about syllables this week! We did a check in to see if we understood how to hear the syllables in words by sorting pictures based on the syllables in the name of the object. You will see in the pictures above that some answers were different between students based on what they decided to call the object. For example: Boy has 1 syllable but detective has 3 syllables. We then challenged them to try and spell a few names of the objects calling to their minds that each syllable has to have a vowel in it. We will be working on that next further next week. Students then took a look at printed words and started exploring where syllable breaks were in words. We again made them aware of the syllable breaks had to include a vowel as some students are splitting words into their "chunks" like cl/ip instead of recognizing that clip is a 1 syllable word.
Also this week we kicked off our research about Polar Bears! We took a look at a wonderopolis question of Why Are Polar Bears White (http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-are-polar-bears-white/). We dug deep into the meanings of hollow and transparent. We tried multiple ways to understand the idea that when light refracts it makes white but it was a little over the heads - even though I tried desperately to show them using flashlights and prisms. But, this is a concept that is very advanced for this age. The main idea I wanted them to get is that polar bears fur is not actually white but just looks that way. We then started reading from Polar Bear non-fiction texts to start gathering information about them. As a class, and on their own, we created post-it notes from the facts we read to track our knowledge about Polar Bears.
Also this week we kicked off our research about Polar Bears! We took a look at a wonderopolis question of Why Are Polar Bears White (http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-are-polar-bears-white/). We dug deep into the meanings of hollow and transparent. We tried multiple ways to understand the idea that when light refracts it makes white but it was a little over the heads - even though I tried desperately to show them using flashlights and prisms. But, this is a concept that is very advanced for this age. The main idea I wanted them to get is that polar bears fur is not actually white but just looks that way. We then started reading from Polar Bear non-fiction texts to start gathering information about them. As a class, and on their own, we created post-it notes from the facts we read to track our knowledge about Polar Bears.