Stranded!, Novel Study, Word Work, and Birthday Fun

Our Wagon Trains are on the home stretch, but there's one last obstacle on our path! The pioneers were on the way over a Sierra Nevada pass when a storm blew in, stranding them in the snow. The teams had to decide how to handle the situation... hunker down, build shelter, and hope to find food? split up and send the strong ahead for help? stick together and struggle slowly ahead?... then present their experience in a short performance.

Here the students are reading aloud in their novel study groups. The 4th graders are reading Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie and the 3rd graders are reading Sarah, Plain and Tall. They're looking for character traits that define a chosen character and pushing their thinking about it with some sentence starters. They designed a poster to share the ideas that came out of the discussion.

Here are some examples of their ideas:

"Hattie likes being barefoot. She says that she will walk barefoot to Oregon. This makes me think that she likes the feel of nature on her feet."

"She notices small details, like when she sees Mrs. Kenker steal a silver spoon."

"She likes traditional names more than people that re named after trees. The thought I have about this is she is a more traditional person."

"The dogs like Sarah. This makes me realize that she is kind-hearted."

"Sarah loves the ocean because she was born in Maine. To add on, she is sort of wild."

"Hattie doesn't give up. For example, she was looking for the three sisters in a different wagon that had disappeared."

"Hattie has inside humor. The thought I have about this is it shows that her friendships are important to her."

 Reading Buddies with the Kindergartners

 The 3rd graders are playing a game to work with the Long "O" sounds in their spelling list.

 Happy birthday, Hugo!!!! Hugo shared this sweet monkey that he received as a baby and a photo of a place he would love to visit in the future: Nepal!

Tiny Class- Big Learning

 Check out the students playing math games on Wednesday. The 4th graders are playing Race to 1000. They roll two numbers on a 9-sided die and multiply them together. Then they build the product with base-10 blocks and roll again. They re-group the numbers as they make their way to 1000.

The 3rd graders are playing High Card Wins. It's "War" with multiplication facts.

Success!

Guest Blogger- Mila!

      Last Wednesday in art class our class decorated the inside of our pioneer journals.  We didn’t use little bits of leather or other doodas, we used ripped up pieces of brown paper bags, varnish, crushed natural colored chalk, and more varnish. The journals look completely fabulous.

Gloria's hands with her awesome pioneer journal
(or A-W-E-S-O-M-E, as Devin would say)

Mila's pioneer journal (OWNED BY NATIVE AMERICAN)

      On Tuesday our class made marble runs out of PVC pipes and kapla blocks. With only 3 girls and 4 boys, our class broke into groups to build the best marble runs that I’ve ever seen! We were allowed to use tape and other random objects around the classroom. It was really cool to see if the runs worked properly and how fast the marbles went.

Mila,  Vivienne, and Gloria make a super cool marble run. 

a marble has rolled into a paper cop

An opening in the PVC pipe

     Tuesday was also Alex’s birthday!!! He shared his bear that he got when he was born, a picture of Shilah, and a photo of a big fish that he caught in Colorado. Then we all got popcorn and played a game of dodgeball. After that we each got a jolly rancher and went home.

    Our class is having a really hard time staying away from fevers and the flu.  We are getting close to 5 people in the whole class! I hope that every one is back by Monday. I am missing every one. Some times I tell Devin that nobody is actually sick, they’re just on vacation!!!

  

Alex shares his bear stuffy

Alex shares a picture of a fish that he caught

A picture of Alex's dog, Shilah 

Meeting, Science, and Scenes from Break

Here is Dylan facilitating the class meeting. He was the first student to facilitate for the second time and he shared that it went much more smoothly and he felt more clear about what to do. 

"So, look forward to that, guys!" he said. 

He chose to follow up on a discussion from a previous meeting about a possible 3rd and 4th grade class overnight trip. The group agreed that it would be fun to spend a night camping at Samuel P. Taylor. I'm open to the idea and allowed the motion to pass, contingent on a number of important details coming together in future meetings. Dylan did a great job of managing the class and keeping the discussion on track!

On Tuesday, I was working with the 5th and 6th graders and Lindsay and I invited them to join the 3rd/4th grade science class. The students worked together to research a planet. The 5th and 6th graders also shared some of their favorite aspects of middle school science and explained what to expect when they move over to Javier's class.

Sweet moments from lunch this afternoon...

Have an awesome weekend! If you're headed to the snow, zoom down a hill, then enjoy a warm beverage for me! And perhaps take a moment to ask your kid to share a little about what he or she has learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. this week. 

Guest Blogger- Skyler!

Last week we had a pioneering campfire with the tables tilted on their sides for the “wagons”, and a candle for the flame with logs and rocks surrounding it. We still have the wood and candle on the floor! We all had a good time. We sang songs and Devin told “scary” stories, one of them was when Devin and her friends were staying alone in South Dakota during winter and Devin’s dad tricked them into thinking that a ghost was knocking on the door! J On 1/17/13, we painted Martin Luther King Jr. No, let me correct you, we finger-painted him!J Using black and white paint and our fingers to paint finger-sized dots paint sections of a picture of him, and we’re soon going to put it up on our wall. -Skyler

The following photos of the Team 3/4 artists were shot by Skyler. Such interesting perspective!

I'm very excited about how our Dr. King portrait turned out. I think it's really spectacular and a beautiful way to honor such an important man. You should definitely come check it out in person. This week, we read a MLK biography by Mary Winget that I love because it's filled with incredible photographs. We also discussed non-violent resistance and the context of life in the segregated South that necessitated such a passionate and powerful response. 

Skyler also took these photos of a sculpture workshop taught by Alex! The whole class was very grateful to Alex for bringing in the clay and teaching us some techniques for molding emotive faces. 

Way to step up, Alex! 

Guest Blogger- Max!

Hello my name is Max. I’m the team 3^rd and 4^th grade blogger at ccs for our class. In my opinion our class learns  and has fun at the same time. Like when we wrote to authors and some of us got responses. Some of us even got signed pictures! It feels good to get letters from famous people it makes you feel like they care. We pay attention in class. And we help each other. We have a wide expanse of books in our library.

The photos below were taken by Max!:

Welcome Back!

Welcome back! I have to tell you, it feels so great to be back in the class with these awesome kids! Thank you all so much for the most gracious gifts. I was very touched by your thoughtfulness. It means so much to me, truly. 

It felt great to get right back into the swing of things. The 3rd graders had a very exciting day today. They started... drumroll please... MULTIPLICATION! 

We'll work with modeling multiplication as repeated groups, repeated addition, arrays, and areas before starting the amazing 9-Lines visual imaging curriculum.

The 4th graders are translating the work we've been doing with finding the area of rectangles to their first algorithm for ***multi-digit multiplication***!

If you didn't hear, we ended the day on a very exciting note. We wrote letters to our favorite authors months ago, and some of our students received replies! I'll wait to tell you more because Max is going to share the excitement as our first student blogger of the year! I've added a job to the job board and now one student each week will be responsible for writing a blog post and taking and uploading photos. Today the kids brainstormed the types of topics the blogger could write about and you can look forward to posts about projects in class, adventures on the playground, sample student work, and the ways we see kindness in action in our community.