Fort Ross Friday

Reminders:

• Halloween is Monday. 8:45 Costume parade (no masks, weapons or violence related costumes).
• No school on Thursday and Friday for parent/guardian conferences with teachers.
  

Thank you to Amelia's family for the wonderful snack of yogurt and fruit for our Friday shared snack!

Fort Ross: The students are bringing home an assignment today to share with you. It is about their Fort Ross Character. Jeff sent an email regarding this assignment with details about a letter writing project for an adult in the family to complete. If you do not receive the email, or need to know more about it, please be in touch. If your child looses track of the assignment, which has a photocopy of their work so far, please see this document for the framework they are using.

Here are the assignment guidelines for the kids:

Fort Ross Weekend Homework

1. Please share about your Fort Ross character with the adults in your family.

2. Show and explain the copy of your Fort Ross Biographical Research sheet you are working on, and the background information.

3. Explain how you are making inferences (an educated guess) about what this person may have been like and how they lived.

4. Give the sheets to your adult(s) to keep.

Thursday, Oct. 27

Reminders:

• NO Community Lunch tomorrow, so be sure to pack a lunch, unless you normally are part of the Eat Smart program. Please let us know if you are willing to organize future Community Lunches.
• Halloween parade on Monday, Oct. 31 at 8:45 a.m.

Homework:

• Fourth grade math due tomorrow:
  Blue group: Unit 2, page 3
  Purple group: Compute handout
• Fifth grade math: the problem of the week is due tomorrow. Please see blogs from earlier this week for homework downloads.
• Reading log due tomorrow.
  
• Fort Ross Costumes: Don't forget the dress rehearsal is November 8!

Math:
Fourth graders in the blue group worked on graphing their raisin data today, and measured their heights in inches. The purple group graphed the number of pancakes students had eaten in one sitting (a lot!), and then figured out ways to graph both the first grade and fourth grade height data to compare them.

Fifth graders continued their work with volume.

Math & More Fort Ross Preparations

Reminders:

• NO Community Lunch on Friday, so be sure to pack a lunch that day. Please let us know if you are willing to organize future events.
• Halloween parade on Monday, Oct. 31 at 8:45 a.m.

Homework:

• Study your "My List" words for the spelling quiz tomorrow, and finish defining your 4 vocabulary words from the "Challenge List." The handout can be downloaded here.
  
• 4th grade math blue group (Jeff & Stephen) homework:
  Option 1: Unit 2, page 1
  Option 2: Unit 2, page 2
  Due tomorrow.
  4th grade math purple group (Sima) homework
  Option 1: Unit 2, page 3
  Option 2: Word problem handout
  Due tomorrow.
• 5th grade math packet can be downloaded here.
  
• Fort Ross Costumes: Don't forget the dress rehearsal is November 8!
  

Math:
Fourth graders worked in two half-groups today, looking at the shape of data, by organizing it and finding landmarks like the maximum, minimum, range, and mode. Students shared the graphs they brought from home, and talked about how graphs are used to answer questions and make decisions. The blue group with Jeff and Stephen made line plots of the number of family members in students' families, and discussed how to find the median. The purple group with Sima made tally charts of the raisin data from Monday. Then they started working on the question: What is the difference in height between fourth graders and first graders? Amalia pointed out that we would need to measure the height of many fourth graders and first graders, since there is such a big range in heights in one grade. Students measured their own heights in inches, and then we visited the Blackberry Creek class and measured the heights of first graders there.

Fort Ross:
The gardeners and the hunters met today to make their preparations for the trip to Fort Ross. Students continued their study of Fort Ross history and are now in the throws of developing a profile for the Fort Ross character they will role play. This is a tricky task, as we have little information about these real people. Students are making inferences based on the historical background shared in class and in readings. The study of Native Californians and the Missions ties directly into this process.

Cooperative Problem Solving & Balanced Ecosystems

Reminders:

• Halloween parade is this coming Monday, October 31 at 8:45 a.m.
• We have a new calendar of important events for the school year, including new dates for field trips. This includes canceling the scheduled Community Lunch for this Thursday, Oct. 28. Please let us know if you are interested in helping organize a Community Lunch in the future.
• Math Club debuts at lunch/recess this Thursday. Ask your student if they plan to attend!
  

Homework:

• Spelling: For homework, the students will practice the words on their personal list, and complete the vocabulary word definition assignment. Due Thursday.
  
• 4th grade math: Cut out and bring in 2 examples of graphs from newspapers, magazines, or web sites. Give your parents their letter about this unit, which you can download here.
  Due tomorrow, Wednesday.
• 5th grade math: The problem of the week is due Friday, and students should work on it for homework this week.

Math:
Today fourth and fifth graders worked together cooperatively in groups of 3 or 4 students to solve five different three-dimensional problems called "Build It!" Each student had one or two clues they shared with the others, and after much perseverance with the connecting cubes, they shared their solutions with the class. It was a great opportunity to learn more about working in collaboration, taking turns, and learning from each other.

Science:
We have been discussing ecosytems and how there can be mutual relationships in science. Today we asked whether wolves can help rabbits, by running a computer simulation of wolves, rabbits, and grass, that you can check out here:

Shodor Rabbits & Wolves

Students worked in pairs on the computer with a See, Think, and Wonder thinking routine to figure out what was happening to the grass, rabbits, and wolves. They altered the number of rabbits or other parameters to see whether they could create a balanced ecosystem. Sophie made a great observation that although an individual rabbit may not be helped when killed by a wolf, the population of all the rabbits can be helped when a wolf kills some rabbits, since the rabbits won't overpopulate and starve. It was great to see the lightbulbs going off!

Social Skills program information from Kate Klaire:
Hey Parents! We would like to invite you to join us in supporting your kids with our new Social Rules Books (or curriculum). We will let you know each week or two what rule(s) we are working on and you can join the fun of working on these rules with your kids at home. This week we have been working on what it means to be both a speaker and a listener. We talked about some important aspects - eye contact - taking turns - sharing the space - be a part of the group. Ask your kid to try it with you.

Students share clues to solve a 3-dimensional puzzle

Spelling Words, New Math Units & Fort Ross Packing Lists

Reminders:
Parents, come tonight to learn more about how to help students thrive socially at the event from 6:30-8:00 p.m. in the Depot.

Homework:

• Fort Ross: Please read over the green packing list handout for Fort Ross that students brought home today, and the green costume handout they brought home Friday.
• Spelling: For homework, the students will practice the words on their personal list, and complete the vocabulary word definition assignment. Due Thursday, 10/27/11.
  
• 5th grade math: Cerrito is off to China Town tomorrow, so there will be no regular homework tonight. However, the problem of the week is due Friday, and students should work on it for homework this week.
• 4th grade math: Cut out and bring in 2 examples of graphs from newspapers, magazines, or web sites. Give your parents their letter about this unit, which you can download here.
  Due Wednesday, 10/26/11 (not tomorrow, since Cerrito will be on a field trip).

Math:
4th and 5th graders will have their own Math Club, led by Sima, on Thursdays in the Middle School during lunch and recess. Students will enjoy math puzzles, problems, and games, and some tasty baked treats.

Fifth graders began a new unit today on 3-D geometry. Read all about it in TERC's family letter (part 1 and 2). They built boxes and fit multi-link cubes inside to find volume. Most of them arrived at the formula for finding the volume of a rectangular prism by the end of class today and will formally learn it on Wednesday.

Fourth grade math questions for today: What is data? How can we describe a set of data?
We began our next unit, Describing the Shape of the Data (described here), about data analysis and probability. We met in half groups of students, with one group working in Strawberry with Jeff and Stephen, and one group in Wildcat with Sima. Students counted the number of raisins in small boxes and started organizing the class data to answer questions like: What is a typical amount of raisins in a box?

Spelling Lists: Today the students took a pretest of eight high frequency spelling words. They used their results to compile a personal spelling list. For students successful with the high frequency spelling words, challenge words were substituted for the personal lists.

Fort Ross: This afternoon we went over the packing list for Fort Ross. Please note that packed bags will be due at school on Friday, November 11 (before the trip day) to simplify our departure. We also discussed Night Watch and answered student questions.

Role Play Character Profiles: This week your student will develop a profile about his or her Fort Ross character. These will be sent home later in the week. This is a good opportunity to learn more about your child's character.