Thanksgiving Theme

Our theme this week is Thanksgiving. Our word of the day today was "will". It was a rule follower. It was homonyn, too. It was from a very popular word family, the hill of -ill. We listed lots of words on our hill for our clothesline. At math time, we learned about new kind of graph called a pie graph. We collected data about our favorite kind of pie. First we tallied our data. Then, we used string to make a human pie graph. Then, while we worked on a pie graph paper, Mrs. Myers showed our data on the television using a pie graph and bar graph. We learned that a pie graph does not show as many details as a bar graph. After lunch and recess, we met with Mrs. Lauber's class. We brainstormed everything we thought we knew about the pilgrims, indians, and the first thanksgiving. We discussed who were the pilgrims, where did they come from, how was their ride on the Mayflower, why did they move. Then, we met with a group and decided one thing we would like to learn about the pilgrims, the indians, and the first thanksgiving. We recorded both of these on a KWL chart. Then, we had reading workshop time. Finally it was time for our new Thanksgiving centers. In the sentence strips center, we are matching contractions to the two words that make the contraction. In the listening center, we heard the story, The Great Turkey Race. We recorded the story elements. We had to listen for two problems and write the solution to each problem. In the writing center, we wrote a silly story about a turkey at the mall. We had to use ten of the word of day words that Mrs. Myers picked. In the games center, we were "dressing" a turkey with feathers to match the short vowel that is missing. We had a short a turkey, a short i turkey, a short o turkey, and a short u turkey. Tomorrow, the art center will open. After centers, we had our writing workshop time. Mrs. Myers helped us understand what the word content means. It was tricky. She brought along a stuffed turkey named Mr. Gobbles to show us how "stuffing" our stories with events, adjectives, and details makes the story "meatier". If we just include the characters, setting, problem, and solution, we have a skeleton story, just like Mr. Bones in the art center two weeks ago. We worked hard to add "meat" to our stories . We will work on content all week! At the end of the day, we had art! Tomorrow, we will arrive to school as a pilgrim!