Saturday, March 15, 2014

Opus, Vocabulary, and Simple Machines

Opus
On Thursday we had a visitor. Opus, a trained therapy dog, came to read with our class and our 5th grade reading buddies. We learned about what it takes to become a therapy dog and the differences of therapy dogs, guide dogs, and police K-9 dogs. Some of us even got to read with Opus.

Vocabulary
To practice vocabulary, we have started a new game. We worked with partners back-to-back to see if they could draw and label the vocabulary word their partner was defining. This week we used it with math vocabulary, but it can be used with any vocabulary word. The kids did well. It was a lot of fun.

Simple Machines
To kick off our science unit on simple machines, we discussed several machines that we use every day. There are a lot of simple machines (inclined plane, wheel and axel, pulley, lever, wedge, and screw) in our playground, gym, and building. We also co-created simple machine 'traps.' Our traps were created to possibly 'catch a leprechaun' this weekend. (This works well for the St. Patrick's Day holiday and our upcoming reading unit on legends.) 


2 comments:

  1. I liked making leprechaun traps with my partner Katie. Our trap used a lever / the lid. We put tape around the gold coin so if he tried getting the coin, he would fall on the tape. from Isabel

    ReplyDelete
  2. We worked with our "face" partners for this lesson. One of us got a sheet with math vocabulary words. She/he had to give the definition of a math word and I had to write the word and symbol on the white board. - Kriti

    ReplyDelete