My 1st and 2nd grade Spanish students put on un restaurante for the
3rd and 4th graders before the break!
Nice work, Team! The students gave presentations of their CA Road Trip projects.
We're always working to build our team. Here, I challenged the kids to use a
crazy string-and-rubber-band tool to move the cups into a pyramid without touching them directly.
Look at that concentration and communication! My mom and sister were very impressed :)
Happy Birthday Sara!
I love GGs! Can you feel the excitement in these pictures as we open our grand finale gifts?!
These fabulous mathematicians are modeling multiplication as repeated groups. Tomorrow we'll look at multiplication as repeated addition, then we'll talk about arrays. I always love the beginning multiplication work. There's great energy in the students as they enjoy all those early a-ha! moments. In math, students are working on some of the following:
- concrete multiplication models
- counting the tens and hundreds inside of bigger numbers
- subtraction across zeroes review
- symmetry and congruence
- multi-digit multiplication
- prime and composite numbers
- prime factorization
- elapsed time
- important math vocab review- sum, difference, product, factors, etc.
Over the break I found myself scheming some awesome Social Studies projects. We're learning about the work of archaeologists. Here, students are investigating a puzzle piece to learn important lessons about making assumptions about an artifact out of context. Then students completed the puzzles, only to find many of the pieces missing. If some of the pieces are missing, can we still come to reasonable conclusions about the big picture? How does this relate to the excavation work an archaeologist might do? Our vocabulary words for the day were archaeology, artifact, and context. I'm looking forward to learning more about our Native American tribes through an archaeological dig activity in the next few weeks!
Another recent highlight for me has been utilizing some of my marine biology background. The character Karana describes a lot of California inter-tidal ecology in Island of the Blue Dolphin. It's been great to dig into some of her descriptions and learn more about those incredible ecosystems.
We are currently selecting poetry that engages and inspires us to deeply analyze, memorize, and practice reciting. We've been watching videos of inspiring, theatrical poetry recitations and discussing what makes for a powerful recitation. Students have chosen poems by poets ranging from Langston Hughes to Shel Silverstein to Robert Frost to Jack Prelutsky.
I am also about to begin teaching the students how to collect writing that can be developed into essays and invite them to become essay writers. I'll show them that essayists observe the world with care and then think about their observations, recording them in writing.
Happy 2014! I'm excited to be back!
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