Power Polygons

No homework this weekend!

Reminders:

• Please fill out, sign, and turn in the Muir Beach Student Waiver if you haven't already, so that your child can participate in the Wednesday, February 15 field trip. Adults on the trip are covered by a group waiver and do not need to complete individual waivers.
• If you child is preparing next week's Community Lunch, please remember to bring in the food this Monday, Feb. 13.
• Tuesday is Valentine's day. If you child chooses to make Valentines, please make sure they make one for all 24 students in the class, and do not include any candies or treats (we will have cookies as part of our Community Lunch that day). No need to pack a lunch that day.
• No school Friday, February 17 through Friday, February 24 for Prof. Dev. & Presidents Day break.

Buddies and Community Lunch Planning
During Buddies today the students worked on posters for our upcoming Bake Sale fundraiser for Marine Mammal Center on March 8. More details about this event will be forthcoming. During Buddies, Kathleen (Caroline's mom) worked with the students preparing Tuesday's community lunch to make decorations for the event. Many thanks to Kathleen for her dedication to this special event.

Fourth grade math
Students met all together today to talk about polygons--what makes a polygon a polygon, and how can we identify shapes that are not polygons? They came up with these ideas:

• Polygons have straight sides, no curves.
• Polygons are closed figures, no gaps or lines sticking out.
• Polygons have no intersecting lines.

We played Guess My Rule using a variety of small plastic polygons called "Power Polygons," then students created new polygons with different rules by putting together Power Polygons and tracing them.

Class Newspaper update: The Strawberry class newspaper is on hold while we sort out an unfortunate event with our use of technology. Several students had the articles they were working on deliberately erased. This event has also placed our use of the class document sharing site on hold. The class met to discuss this issue, and the teachers hope that student(s) involved will come forth to help us move forward. When we first began use of the document sharing site, we discussed the issues of trust and personal responsibility that was expected. Using the site helped us manage use of a limited number of computers. We will be moving to an alternate solution for use of computers for the remainder of the year, but are still hoping the loss of trust will be restored by having this event resolved (as discussed with the students today).