Step Up Day tomorrow

• Step Up Day tomorrow Wednesday, May 9. Please make sure your child is at school promptly by 8:30 a.m.  This is an opportunity for all the fifth graders to come together in the Wildcat Creek classroom with sixth grade teachers Norman Johnson & Marcella Anwandter and spend the morning as middle schoolers, as well as for fourth graders to be the mentors to the third graders visiting for the morning.  They will spend the entire morning, then back to their normal classrooms for recess and lunch at 11:45 a.m. Please let us know if you have any questions.
• 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.

Homework:

Fourth grade math homework, due Thursday
Purple group: 
Finish the JUMP Geometry packet (if you did not finish it in class)
Standardized Test Practice (skip problems you've seen before)
Blue Group: No homework.

What if? foundation visit
Today Margaret Trost from the What If? foundation came to visit our class to tell us about the work her organization is doing in Haiti, and how funds the class raises with the Walkathon will help the children there.  Our students brainstormed lots of ideas for small, light, fun, and useful things that they can send with her to the kids in Haiti, like small bouncy balls, pens & pencils, hair clips, hot wheel cars, and tiny toys and action figures (but without guns).  You can learn more about the organization at their web site:  www.whatiffoundation.org.

ERB preparations:  Today was our final in a series of preparation lessons for taking the ERB tests next week.  The students worked on the constructed response section of the exam that requires written responses and showing your work.  It is not multiple choice.  We discussed strategies for the reading section, such as, read the question before reading the story so you know what to look for as you read.  In the math section we discussed how important showing your work is since the test is scored based on effort and showing your thinking, and is not just about correct answers.

Fourth grade math
Purple group:  After sharing the multiple choice homework, we explored more concepts in geometry today.  First we talked about slides (translations), flips (reflections), and turns (rotations).  Students learned how to describe these on coordinate grids.  Our other focus was volume, in particular, volume of rectangular prisms.  By looking at connecting cube constructions, students derived a formula for the volume of a rectangular prism:  length x width x height.  No 4th grade math tomorrow due to Step Up Day.

Blue Group:  Today we worked with area in geometry to discover the relationship between length & width compared to base & height.  The students were already familiar with the formula for finding the area of a rectangle, length x width = area.  Our work today led us to uncover that base x height can be used to find the area of a parallelogram that is not a rectangle.  Students cut parallelograms in half and reassembled them as rectangles to prove this formula works for finding the area.
No homework tonight.

Thanks to chaperones!

Reminders:

• 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.

Homework:
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 2

Part 3

Thanks to chaperones!
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 height
Area of triangle = (base x height) / 2

Fifth grade math

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!).

 

 

Early arrival 8 a.m. & late pickup 4:30 p.m. tomorrow

Reminders:
We are so excited about our trip tomorrow to the place where gold was first discovered in California, Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma. We will be exploring the buildings and museum and panning for gold.  It should be a full day!

1. Please arrive at 8:00 a.m. with student's packed Day Pack containing:
* hearty snacks
* hearty bag lunch
* water bottle
* sunscreen
* good book to read in the car (optional)

The weather should be good, partly cloudy and only a 10% chance of rain, temperatures in the 60s.  We will do a lot of walking, so students should wear:
* good shoes to walk in
* layers, including a rain jacket (just in case!)

Please leave electronics, candy, and gum at home, just like any other school day.  An exception is an e-book reader.

2.  Meet in front parking lot - we are not going to the classroom.
3.  Students should sign in with a teacher.
4.  Drivers should park near the entrance to the school.

We will return to school between 4:30-5:00 p.m.  We will leave a message with Cindy at the front desk if we are running later than that, due to traffic, etc.  Please let us know if you have any questions, and thanks very much!

No homework tonight or tomorrow.


Fourth grade math
Purple group:  Measurement was our focus today, in particular, the US Customary system.  First, we looked at measures of volume or capacity.  Students in small groups poured water from container to container to determine how many cups in a pint, quart, half gallon, and gallon. Students practiced converting between units, as well as calculating the number of fluid ounces (fl.oz.) in each.  Then we examined measures of weight, by comparing an ounce to a slice of bread, and a pound to a loaf of bread (16 ounces).  We pointed out that fluid ounces and ounces are not related and easy to confuse!  Students hunted for objects in the classroom weighing approximately an ounce.

Puppets and Script Writing

Reminders:

Students must be at school at 8:00 a.m. this Friday, May 4  for our field trip to Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma!  Please make a note in your calendars and get ready to come to school early that day (and plan for a late return around 4:30). 

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.

Homework:
Sentence and Punctuation multiple choice practice (due Thursday).

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow

Purple group:  Standardized test practice--quantitative reasoning & estimationBlue Group Homework:  Function machines and using parenthesis.

Fifth Grade Math: Fifth graders struggled through more starter problems in division today. They wondered why they should have to do this when they could just use the algorithm. The truth is that they are wonderful for helping students develop number sense and strengthening mental math skills. Onward! ERB pages for homework.

Puppets and Scripts:  Our main focus today was on writing the scripts and trying to finish building the puppets for our show on May 23.  We had a "round table" discussion of how the scenes are coming along and many groups are ready to practice with the puppets.  This project requires personal dedication, cooperative team work, and flexibility in a group setting.  The kids are amazing!

Fourth grade math
Blue Group: Today we used our recently learned strategy for making equivalent fractions to help us add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators.  Students learned to use the denominators from each fraction in the problem to create a fact family, and resulting common multiple for the denominator.  Some students are beginning to see connections between fractions using multiples, and for others this is a developing skill.  A few students had the opportunity to practice simplifying fractions as well.

Purple group:  We practiced multiplying fractions by whole numbers (like 1/2 of 10) as our warm up today.  Then students took an assessment to end our fraction and decimal unit.

Tuesday News

Reminders:

Students must be at school at 8:00 a.m. this Friday, May 4  for our field trip to Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma!  Please make a note in your calendars and get ready to come to school early that day (and plan for a late return around 4:30).

Homework:
Sentence and Punctuation multiple choice practice (due Thursday).

Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Purple group
Prepare for tomorrow's assessment.
Option 1: Complete a few of each kind of problem on the Fraction & Decimal Review
Option 2:  Handout

Blue Group Homework:  Standardized testing preparation worksheets.
5th Grade Math: Fifth grade will continue ERB practice for homework this evening.

Fourth grade math
Purple group:  Our warm up today focused on writing equations to solve word problems.  We discussed comparison of fractions, then students worked on a Fraction & Decimal Review handout, to look back at all they have learned this unit.  Questions came up:  for example, what does it mean to write a fraction in "lowest terms"? (Find a common factor and simplify the fraction until it can no longer be simplified.) They will continue to work on completing at least a few of each kind of problem for homework, and we will go over answers in class tomorrow before the assessment.  A small group continued work calculating percentages (handout here).

Blue Group: Today we focused on making equivalent fractions.  We had an easy time thinking of equivalents for 1/2, but posed with finding equivalents for 1/4 the class was stumped, so we used a little "math magic" by multiplying by different versions of 1 (for example, 2/2, 3/3, 5/5 . . .) to make equivalent fractions.  Then, we continued work on adding fractions by finding common denominators.