- No school or childcare available this Friday, Jan. 13, for Report Writing Day or Monday, Jan. 16 for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. See you on Tuesday, Jan. 17!
- Please sign and return the permission slip your student brought home for the field trip to the Oakland Museum of California on Thursday, January 19 from 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
No new homework over the 4-day break, but students should read 30 minutes a day.
Fourth grade math homework:
Students are encouraged to complete unfinished work, and practice multiplication facts. See past blogs for links to online games.
4th Grade Blue Group: Play the dice game at least once over the break.
Developing empathy
We began class today with an activity designed to help students see others' points of view. Students chose between four animals that they would most like to be: eagles, turtles, lions, or chameleons. They discussed why they liked being that animal, and why they wouldn't want to be the other animals, then presented that to the class. We talked about the advantages of having different kinds of people in a community.
This was extended by role plays in our all school assembly, depicting common situations at our school, and how the words and actions of students can be hurtful to others. Since one part of our mission is to develop generous hearts, bringing up issues like this and discussing them as a community are important.
Science: The students are continuing to work on their ocean research projects. Today they began writing the first of several short essays about their topic. Hoping to demystify the word "essay," and encourage the same energy students have in researching to go into reporting about it, the essays are about a half page in length with emphasis on catching the reader's attention, and sharing what factual information that has interested the researcher.
Gold Rush Simulation Game: We are well into the Gold Rush simulation and even began a round of "mining." Students prepare for mining by taking notes about Gold Rush related topics. They earn gold for completing the notes and other assignments. During a mining round, questions about the topics studied are asked (in a game show format). Questions are sourced from all areas of our California study this year, as well as the current Gold Rush information. The game has it hardships for the players, and we discussed our slogan today of, "The Gold Rush was not fair." While a game for us, we are discussing our essential question of "What happens when different cultures meet," in context of the inequity of people's experiences during the Gold Rush (pre-Civil War in the U.S.).
Fourth grade math
Due to today's assembly, we had only 20 minutes for math class today. Students in the purple group completed an assessment of their ability, given a double-digit division equation, to create a story problem and solve it.
Blue Group: We used our short math class to continue work in progress. The students are assigned the multiplication math game they learned in class this week to play at least once over the break. It is simple to play and uses regular dice. The students have a paper copy.
