Happy MLK Day

Reminders:

• 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.

Homework:
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.

Science experiments & musical instruments

Reminders:

• Some students are planning a Valentine's Day Community Lunch with Caroline's mom Kathleen.  If your child is involved, you will be hearing from Kathleen soon, asking you to provide food on Tuesday, Feb. 14. The rest of the students will plan meals in March or May.
• We have a new schedule, which you can download here, due to the musical instrument program.
• 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:
30 minutes of reading on the reading log students brought home Monday (see Monday's blog to download).

Pioneers in California chapter and questions. Responses are to be written in complete sentences, with special attention to capitals, spelling (words from text especially) and punctuation. This activity was started in class.

Fifth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Download homework on yesterday's blog.

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Purple group:
Spend 20 minutes practicing 2 or 3 challenging multiplication fact families, using their student-made multiplication cards, Math Magician Multi, or one of the following games: Pumpkin Multiples, Snowball Fight, or Patty's Paints (these 3 games can be used to practice 12's)

Blue Group: No math homework, but practice multiplication facts (see above).

Science

As part of our study of the oceans, students did some experiments yesterday and today in groups of 4, testing whether temperature or saltiness would affect the density of water.

Student scientists collaborate to compare different temperature waters

Green-colored salty water sinks

Red colored warmer water floats above blue colored cold water

Cooperation is key when doing group science experiments

Musical Instruments

Many students brought home musical instruments they made this week as part of the music project.  The students are so engaged while working purposefully with the tools to create.

4th Grade Math

Blue Group: Today and yesterday the blue group worked in class on an assessment covering addition, subtraction and multiplication, including multi-step word problems. Today we also played a multiplication game with dice that can be played at home to practice multiplication facts and addition or subtraction computation. Some students began the next part of our study with division, practicing to break items into sets, and skip count to solve division problems. Homework was not assigned but all students are encouraged to practice multiplication facts.

In the purple group, we started with a mixed problem warm up. We learned that 1 cup = 1/2 pint, so there are 2 pints in a quart. Our question of the day was "How can we solve double-digit division problems mentally?" Students practiced looking at problems like 318 ÷ 7 as 7 times what would equal 318, without going over? After sharing strategies, we played an array game where students had to find missing factors for facts up through the 12s.

Fifth grade math
5th graders played a computer game to practice converting decimals to fractions and vice versa. They placed fractions on a percent number line on a worksheet. Math closed with a movement activity. Students bounced around three balloons – one with fractions, one with decimals, one with percents – and when the music stopped, they had to name the equivalents from each balloon.

New Musical instrument program begins

Reminders:

• We have a new schedule, which you can download here, due to the musical instrument program.
• 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:
30 minutes of reading on the reading log students brought home yesterday

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Purple group:
Option 1 (plum): Unit 3, pages 27-28, Unit 3, pages 30-31
Option 2 (periwinkle): Unit 3, pages 30-31, JUMP Packet 4

Fifth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Here's the homework for the next two nights. Tonight's homework is erroneously labeled "Thursday class," and is two pages in length.

Blue group:
Blue Group Homework

Today students began their first class with the Dresher musical instrument program. After a quick introduction, they chose a simple practice instrument to make, using tools--either percussion, wind, and string instruments. They will finish these tomorrow, then next week will begin the design process.

Fourth grade math
Students in the purple group started with quick images, writing equations for collections of dots, then continued work on division story problems with and without remainders.

Fifth grade math

Students worked today to find percents of a number. We began by using number sense: what's 100% of 200? Then 50% must be half of that, 25% is half of that, etc. We went so far as to practice changing the percentage to a decimal and multiplying with the algorithm to find trickier percentages, like what is 17% of 37.5? That last part will take some more practice tomorrow!

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!