Group
News
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Book Club Orders: December Book club forms should have come
home Orders need to be turned into me (during the school day) or placed online
by midnight Friday, Dec. 7. You
can get to the December Book Club forms at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs. Our class code is GL7HN. For some reason the November book club forms
are showing on the log in page. You will
need to select December under the shop by tab.
Scholastic has been having website difficulties and it seems my choices
aren’t always showing. There is also a
special Holiday Gift Book & End-of-year catalog you can reach under the
specialty catalog menu to the right of the grade level books.
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College for Kids:
I’ve just received
the Spring College-for-Kids class list and registration forms. I only received a few, but you can go to www.stlcc.edu/CFKids for more
information. These classes are offered through the Continuing Education office
of St. Louis Community College at Meramec.
Classes are on Saturdays from Feb 2 – March 9, 2013. The college is at 11333 Big Bend Road.
First Grade
– Wednesday Mornings
This week we finished our continents book. We looked at South America. In the process we learned that Brazil touches
nearly every S. American country and that the Falkland Islands are governed by
the UK even though they are very close to Argentina. Flat Sage has been a busy world
traveler. After her time in Germany, she
went to visit family in Arizona. We were
able to read her letter and look of pictures of her during her stay. She’s heading to Los Angeles next. Although we have finished the in class
portion of the geography unit, we want to continue hearing from the travels of
our Flat selves. They may continue
traveling as long as you have some place to send them. A couple of weeks ago we talked about being
able to travel through Panama. During
that conversation I mentioned Magellan and his world tour. So this week I presented a map that shows the
route Magellan’s ships took on their journey.
This was just for information and exposure.
Also, we had a not so successful day with our
final lessons from Yolanda the Yarnspinner.
As I said in the Wednesday email, these lessons are very vocabulary
heavy. It’s ok that we weren’t
successful, there was still learning happening and it gives me great information
to build from for later lessons.
Our next set of lessons will come from the
Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley.
It’s called Frog Math. We’ll read
Frog and Toad books and use those stories as foundations for various math
activities.
Second Grade – Tuesday Mornings
Second graders were introduced to the acronym
SCAMPER. SCAMPER is a tool that helps
children (and adults) think of the many ways they could modify an idea. We used it to modify one of three items (a
shoe, an umbrella or a fishing rod.) The
end results were quite interesting. Your
child will bring home their SCAMPER item next week.
We also worked on using our research to being
making the cards for the Monopoly game.
Please know that a bulk of the work for this unit will be done in
class. That said, it’s still very
important for the children to be reading about their topics each week. We’ll go back to our library next week, but
due to the limited resources there most of the children will not be able to
find more books on their topic. We’ll
continue to write our fact cards for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll make the
game boards.
Third Grade
– Tuesday Afternoons
Third graders tackled more advanced lesson in
the Hands-on Equations program. They are
all doing a great job. We’ll be back as
a whole group after the Winter Break.
The children just learning the program were introduced to the concept of
x and y last week. Meanwhile the
students with me did problems that involved fractions. Wow, when I showed them the actual problem
written in algebraic form, they were stunned at what they were able to
accomplish. I am very proud of them for
the hard work they are doing.
When we moved into the Math Around the World
I asked the children to explain our game of NIM, in writing. They were not happy. This is just the first of many games they
will learn. As they do more writing they
will get better and when they get better it won’t’ be so hard for them and
(hopefully) I won’t hear the groans I do now when I say, “please write an
explanation.”
This week’s new game was Kalah. I am aware that many children have played
mancala, but this version has a few rules that are different from how we are
used to playing the game. I am asking
that everyone play the game by our rules. Next week we’ll talk strategies and test
those out. Hopefully we’ll have time for
a Kalah tournament.
Fourth Grade – Monday Afternoons
Wow, Ms. Brown and I are both so blown away by the effort
and enthusiasm we are seeing in the children.
They are so ready for the trial on Monday. The amount of work they have put in, outside
of class, really is showing. He lawyers
are ready, the reporters are ready and the witnesses, they were in full
character this week. While some were
doing their trial prep, others were working on a One-Hour Mystery. These are getting more difficult, but I see
such growth in their ability to reason through the information. They should have their One-hour mystery with
them if they had time to work on it in class.
I’m saving them for the lawyers and reporters who have had no free time
during class.
12/3 – TRIAL DAY! – We will
stage the trial in room 105 (the old library space). We are hoping to start at 1:30, but cannot
guarantee just how long the trial will take. If you can stop by, feel free to
quietly enter our courtroom any time from 1:30 – 3:15 when we’ll have to take a
recess (if we aren’t done) and finish next week.
Fifth Grade – Wednesday Afternoons
I
collected bedroom outlines this week. I’ll
be reviewing them for common threads of misunderstanding that I can then clear
up next week. We began the next section
of Money Math. This set of lessons reviews careers and taxes. We began with two simple exercises to expose
the children to the many choices they have to look forward to. We were first trying to see how math plays
into different jobs. Then the students analyzed case studies of 13 different
careers from Retail Salesperson to a Pediatric Cardiologist and everything in between. The children looked for educational
requirements, uses of math in the positions and finally salaries. Now, my data is a bit old, but it still is
relevant as the differences between the sales person and the doctor are still
going to be huge.
Next
week, we’ll make the connection between education and salary. We will also look at the tax burden based on
your income. In a few weeks the children
will begin a mini-project to find this same information out about the career
they think they want to pursue. This is
a very real world activity that I’ve done in the past with much success.
