Getting to the Gold Country!

Reminders:

• No school or childcare available this Friday, Jan. 13, for Report Writing Day.
• 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.

Homework:
Strawberry Creek

Word Study homework

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow

Purple group:

Practice multiplication facts for 10 minutes using cards, Math Magician Multi, or one of the following games:

Destination: Golden Gulch

Pumpkin Multiples, Snowball Fight, or Patty's Paints (these 3 games can be used to practice 12's)

Option 1: Plum, Unit 3, page 19, pages 23-24

Option 2: Periwinkle, Division with Remainders handout

Blue group:
Blue Group Homework

Fifth graders began their day with a mini-lesson on reading decimal numbers and decimal place value. They converted between decimals, fractions, and percents. The culmination of their day was a word problem in which they had to decide on a tip for a waitress and write about why they chose it and how they calculated it. tonight's homework

Getting to the Gold Country

Students worked in their small groups on the first decision in the Gold Rush simulation.

Student "Prospector" excitedly rolls for their group to find out the consequences of their decision to take the "short cut."

Great excitement to make to the Gold Country!

It can be hard to decide where to stake your claim.

Word Study program: Today we began working in our new Words Their Way word study workbooks. The goal is for students to analyze words based on a spelling concept, sort them into groupings and practice using the words in a variety of ways in class. At the beginning of the week the students will bring the words home to practice the sort tried in class, and record the sort in writing.

Fourth grade math

The purple group looked through marked work from the past month, to see how they are doing in understanding multiplication, division, subtraction, and data interpretation. Then we did another multiplication fact warm-up for five minutes. Students are expected to practice their multiplication facts through 12s, and each week we are checking to see if their speed and accuracy is improving against their own personal best time.

The question of the day: "How can we solve double-digit division word problems?" We looked at some double-digit division word problems in the TERC book with and without remainders, strategies to divide large numbers by halving the numbers or breaking up a larger number into a power of ten plus a smaller number, and dividing these.

4th Grade Blue Group: The blue group began working with division concepts today. We read, The Doorbell Rang, by Pat Hutchins to introduce the idea of sets of things (plates of cookies etc.). The students began work in the packet sent home today. The goal is to work on the packet tonight and tomorrow night in the 30 minutes of written homework time. We are continuing to practice multiplication in class, and basic multiplication facts. PLEASE practice multiplication facts at home. The students have their multiplication cards in their binders, or just roll dice and multiply.

Photos from Friday, January 6

We wrapped up designing environmentally-friendly vehicles with our K/1 buddies!














And finished up the seaweed v. land plant posters!

Ocean Research and The Gold Rush

Reminders:
Please sign and return the permission slip your student is bringing home for the field trip to the Oakland Museum of California on Thursday, January 19 from 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Homework:

4th grade math homework, due tomorrow
4th Grade Purple group: Complete JUMP packet 3
Option 1 (plum); also practice multiplication facts using your multiplication cards
Option 2 (periwinkle)

4th Grade Blue Group: Blue group homework pages.

Science homework (due tomorrow): Ocean Zone vocabulary homework is due tomorrow. Use of a dictionary, ocean resource book, and/or the Internet will be necessary for this assignment. The following are sites with ocean zone diagrams that may be helpful. There are many more available online.

www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/ocean/sunlit/

www.mos.org/oceans/life/index.html

www.seasky.org/deep-sea/ocean-layers.html

www.eoearth.org/article/Epipelagic_zone

www.euromarineconsortium.eu/wiki/Deep_Sea

Ocean Research Project: Today the students began the initial step of beginning research projects about an ocean related topic. Many students chose ideas from the letter they wrote to us in December about topics. Students were introduced to the research notebook and folder in which they will keep track of information, store print outs and any other collected information as they pursue their topic(s). Some students may study more than one topic. Our main goal right now is collecting and recording information and sources. As we progress the students will write short essays about their research, draw maps or diagrams and culminate with a student designed project to teach others about their topic.

California Gold Rush: Today was also our kick off for a Gold Rush simulation activity. While we are studying the Gold Rush, we are also reading By the Great Horn Spoon, by Sid Fleischman following the journey of two characters from Boston to the gold fields of California in 1849.

Fourth grade math: In the blue group today, the students reviewed subtraction, addition, factors, multiples and multiplication with "carrying." Students are learning to apply the multiplication algorithm to solve word problems discussing sets of items, which will help us gear up for division.

The purple group today counted around the class by 7's as a warm up, then explored today's questions: How can we tell when to use division versus multiplication? What do we do if we can't share evenly? Students looked at a variety of word problems and situations, to determine what they knew and didn't know, writing multiplication and division equations to solve these. We also looked at situations where the objects can't be divided equally, and a remainder is left behind. Someone pointed out that if the remainder is equal to or more than the number of sets, then you've made a mistake.

Fifth Grade Math: We started off the hour with a fun warm up of a class favorite, "Pico, Ferme, Bagel." Then moved into the tricky class work of converting fractions into percents by creating a fraction ad percents equivalents chart. This should help them with their homework tonight and overall with the rest of the unit.

Quick writes, kelp forests & mix-it-up lunch

Reminders:
Please sign and return the permission slip your student is bringing home for the field trip to the Oakland Museum of California on Thursday, January 19 from 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Homework:

Science homework (from Tuesday): Ocean Zone vocabulary science homework is due on Friday. Use of a dictionary, ocean resource book, and/or the Internet will be necessary for this assignment. The following are sites with ocean zone diagrams that may be helpful. There are many more available online.

www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/ocean/sunlit/

www.mos.org/oceans/life/index.html

www.seasky.org/deep-sea/ocean-layers.html

www.eoearth.org/article/Epipelagic_zone

www.euromarineconsortium.eu/wiki/Deep_Sea

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
4th Grade Purple group: Complete JUMP packet 2
Option 1 (plum); also practice multiplication facts using your multiplication cards
Option 2 (periwinkle)

Blue Group: Word problem page and practice multiplication cards (2 sided). Multiplication cards are in an envelope in the binder.

Quick writes
We began the day with students writing all they could think of on different subjects, like butter, bears, and pasta. This is a great way to get thinking flowing in the morning--students were eager to share.

Science
Students brainstormed in small groups all they knew about seaweed, then honed their observation skills by watching (without sound) a video about kelp forests, and discussing what they noticed. One student served as our example tree, and students figured out what parts a tree would need to survive on land, and what they would need to survive under water.  Small groups made posters on the differences between seaweed (actually a kind of algae) and plants on land.

Fourth grade math
In the purple group, students shared homework and completed a mental math warm-up activity. Then we discussed mathematical notation for division, and what each number represents in a division problem: the number of things shared equally, the number in each set (group) and the answer being the number of sets. Today's questions were: How can we use skip counting to divide? What is the relationship between division & multiplication? We learned how to write the four expressions that part of a multiplication/division fact family for a given situation.

Happy New Year!

Reminders:

We have a field trip to the Oakland Museum of California on Thursday, January 19 from 8:45-3:00 p.m., as part of our study of the Gold Rush. Please let us know if you are interested in accompanying us as a chaperone that day--it should be fun and very educational!

Homework:

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
4th Grade Purple group: Complete JUMP packet 1
Option 1 (plum); also practice multiplication facts using your multiplication cards
Option 2 (periwinkle)

4^th Grade Blue Group homework: Multiplication worksheet.

Fifth grade math homework:

Work on Tuesday HW in the packet, a simple gathering of everyday uses of fractions, decimals, and percents.

Science homework:

Ocean Zone vocabulary science homework is due on Friday. Use of a dictionary, ocean resource book, and/or the Internet will be necessary for this assignment. The following are sites with ocean zone diagrams that may be helpful. There are many more available online.

www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/ocean/sunlit/

www.mos.org/oceans/life/index.html

www.seasky.org/deep-sea/ocean-layers.html

www.eoearth.org/article/Epipelagic_zone

www.euromarineconsortium.eu/wiki/Deep_Sea

We started the morning with a student search, where students looked for people who had done various things over the break, such as: read a book, traveled on a plane, stayed at home, visited with relatives. After snack, we also played the whole group game "When the Cold Wind Blows," finding things we shared in common. Re-establishing our community as we begin the New Year is important work that lays the groundwork for the exciting academic work students are embarking on this winter.

Fourth grade math

Today the blue group revisited our work in multiplication from before the break. We practiced partial products (multiplying by place value), and then learned the “traditional” multiplication method. The students practiced multiplying without carrying, and with carrying. Tonight’s homework is to continue practicing.

In the purple group, students started class solving as many multiplication problems from the times tables as they could in five minutes. Our goal is to build automaticity with these facts with repeated practice. Our question of the day was: How can we use sets (groups) to solve division problems? Using JUMP math, we practiced looking at situations to figure out what objects were being shared equally, what were the sets, or groups, and how many objects were in each group (set). Students in the periwinkle group had fewer division problems, and got some number sequence problems to work on instead.

Fifth grade math

We kicked the morning off with a little mental math, an important warm-up for the start of a new unit. Converting fractions to decimals and percents is what we will be working on in the next few weeks. I assured them that fractions are very useful in our everyday lives, and yes, not only for dividing pizza amongst a group.