- Step Up Day this Wednesday, May 9. Please make sure your child is at school promptly by 8:30 a.m.
- Spring Performance: Wednesday, May 23rd at 6:30pm in the Depot, the Strawberry class will perform our version of By the Great Horn Spoon. Rehearsal will be 3:30-6:30pm that day.
Script Question Sheet (character work) - Due Tuesday
Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Purple group: Standardized test practice
Blue Group homework: Practice/review pages for Geometry and Measurement. Due Tuesday
Fifth grade math homework for this week
5th Math Part 1
Part 3
We had a very successful trip to the Gold Country on Friday! It was a wonderful way to make our Gold Rush studies come to life. Students had the chance to see a real horn spoon; pan for real gold; hear from a member of the Mormon Battalion in the Mormon cabin and see how they lived there; hear and see blacksmiths at work; explore a Chinese store, bank, and cultural center; and discover more about how mining worked.
Many, many thanks to the parents who drove to Coloma and chaperoned: Amelia's mom Anne, Aya's dad Peter, Hannah's dad Don, Max's dad Eric, Charlotte's dad Tom, Milo's dad Grégoire, and Isaac's dad Randy. We couldn't have done it without you!
Check out more pictures below and on the left of the blog.
Fourth grade math
Purple group: Today students explored finding the area of parallelograms and triangles using the dimensions base and height. Using geoboards, students experimented with a fixed base length and fixed area, discovering that you can create different parallelograms but they all have the same height. They also found that the height is not the side length of the parallelogram (unless it is a rectangle), but the length of a line from the base perpindicular to the opposite side or vertex. We came up with these formulas:
Area of parallelogram = base x heightFifth grade math
Area of triangle = (base x height) / 2
Fifth graders have spent extensive time of late practicing the
seemingly simple skill of counting up and down. As Beatles music plays,
the students warm up their brains skip counting with a partner. I say
seven, you say fourteen. When the music stops, students have often
gotten to the twelfth or thirteenth multiple of the number. Today they
counted by square numbers, to change it up. They continued their work on
starter problems, which have been conceptually quite difficult (perhaps
the most difficult concept of the year?), but students are beginning to
have aha! moments about their utility. What problem would a shopper do
if he wanted 8 lengths of board at $29.99 a piece? Let's hope these kids
don't have to pull out their iPhones for that one (unless of course
it's to calculate the 8% sales tax!).
