September Week 3 Day 4
Updated: Nov 20, 2022
Just a heads up, tomorrow is a PA day, so there will be no Friday lesson plan, which means no Free Time Friday this week (plus they shouldn't have much work to catch up on)!
8:45-9:15 Homework/Silent Reading/Question of the Day Objective: Homework, Question of the Day & Silent Reading
Question (on white board) : Would you rather be able to fly or be able to breathe under water? Explain.
Once everyone has arrived and completed their morning tasks, I get them to come to the carpet. We do our morning announcements and then review the question of the day. Usually my focus is on writing complete sentences with punctuation & capital letters. They need these reminders. I read their answers, allowing them to share if they wrote it (of course if they want to share) and we have a fun discussion about their answers, all while reviewing their sentences.
9:15-10:15 Writing
Writing Expectations:
D2.3 Producing Finished Work: edit, proofread, and publish a variety of written pieces, following a model or a set of guidelines to meet established, with support as appropriate
D2.4 Metacognition: (a) identify, in conversation with the teacher and their peers, several strategies they found helpful before, during, and after writing; (b) determine their areas of greater and lesser strength as writers, and plan steps they can take to improve their writing skills
Today is the day. Students should be done their descriptive paragraphs. I write out the expectations on chart paper. One at a time, I will post a paragraph (without sharing which group it belongs to) and we will grade them. I explain to students before we start that this was a practice, and it was time to make those mistakes. If they get a level 1, 2, 3 or 4, it's ok, and they can learn from this to better their writing. We also discuss what a level 1, 2, 3 and 4 actually mean. You'd be surprised as to how many students actually have no idea.
I explain the following:
Level 3: is where they should be. If they get a level 3, it actually means that they are doing their work at a Grade 6 level and I am proud of that.
Level 2: they are getting really close to the right level, but there may be a few things that they need to work on.
Level 4: they are actually giving me work that has passed the grade 6 level. For example, I may see someone in grade 7 or 8 do this work. They have went above my expectations for their age groups.
Level 1: something went wrong. I may be questioning my teaching skills and if they actually understood the task or not. We may need some 1 on 1 time to work on their learning a little extra.
This is how I explain it to my students. It really seems to get them to understand what the levels actually mean.
Now that this is clear to them, we can go ahead and grade each text, without sharing who actually wrote them. We start with the title and figure out that if they have a title, great! That's a level 3, but if they added an adjective to the title, even better, that would be considered a level 4. We keep going until we have done each expectation and then we chose the final grade (Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 or Level 4). We don't get into -/+, as it gets too complicated for them.
10:15-10:45 Science - Flight
A1.2 use a scientific experimentation process and associated skills to conduct investigations
D2.1 identify flight-related applications of the properties of air
Read the text on Air. Then, you will start exploring the properties of air with experiments.
Experiment 1: Air has a mass (download file for details)
Experiment 2: Air takes up space (download file for detail)
I don't usually tell my students what the properties are until after the experiment. I let them try to figure it out as we do the experiments.
10:45-11:25 Nutrition Break & Recess
Students should now know the rules of nutrition break, feel free to see how they do without repeating yourself. If they have a hard time, review rules tomorrow.
11:25-11:55 Science - Flight
D2.1 identify flight-related applications of the properties of air
Review the 2 new properties with students using the definitions on the downloadable document!
Have students start filling in their very own flip books. They will do the first 3 pages today (title page, air has a mass and air takes up space).
11:55 Start over with your new group
Want September, Week 3 Day 4? What about my entire Flight Science unit? Subscribe now!