Pecha Kucha, Diffy, Soil, Winn-Dixie, O'Keefe, and Peaceful Warriors

Team 3/4 Pecha Kucha

Friday, May 16, 2014

2:00 - 3:00

Pecha Kucha, "chit-chat" in Japanese, is a presentation format through which presenters share their big ideas. Pecha Kucha presenters traditionally show 20 slides for 20 seconds each and narrate the images for the crowd. We have been watching strong sample presentations and working hard to organize our ideas. Our third and fourth grade-style Pecha Kucha will feature some changes to the format that we hope will make for an exciting, engaging event. 

I hope that our wonderful families will be able to join us as the students present their hard work here in our classroom. See you there!

We're playing our newest math game called Diffy! Diffy is great for practicing subtraction, but it also requires students to think logically and identify patterns. We learned to play with positive integers today, but Diffy! will be played with integers, fractions, decimals, and money as we move forward. 

Building models of missions, presidios, and pueblos that demonstrate our understanding of daily life in those institutions.

Students are shaking up soil samples from different zones around campus in order to assess clay content. We need the right proportions of clay, silt, and sand to make effective adobe bricks.

Peer review of a complex, multi-step problem-solving challenge that utilized the third graders' multiplication skills in a new way.

Welcome to Naomi, Florida. We decorated the room with luminarias and pictures of puppies, just like the characters did in the novel. We drank Dump Punch and ate Otis' pickles. It was a super sweet day.

Here we are outside the de Young. Thanks so much to Teacher Julie and the gracious drivers who made the trip possible. We relaxed and snacked in the park before an orientation on color theory. Then we toured the gallery with a docent, focusing on O'Keefe's life story, abstraction, and scale.  We also created our own paintings inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's idea that, "I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make a statement as well as or better than a whole could."

We're deep in training to become Peaceful Warriors. We read Secret of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman and defined a Peaceful Warrior as someone who:

• is his/her own person 
• knows that fear is the enemy
• is always giving to the world
• peacefully defends him/herself and defends others
• tries to do no harm
• is strong
• is gentle
• is deeply aware
• uses words
• is confident and careful
• always helps people up
• "...doesn't fight, doesn't run, because no fear can withstand the courage and love of the peaceful warrior."

Today we used a simple piece of paper, something that many people would define as being very weak, to lift a heavy book. We discussed what it takes to turn a perceived weakness into a powerful strength. We were thoughtful about our own perceived weaknesses and looked for the strength waiting inside of them.