Group
News
First Grade
– Wednesday Mornings
Last week first graders were introduced to
Max the Magician. Max uses visual and spatial perception to solve puzzles. We looked at patterns and found errors in
them. Then we figured out the corrected pattern. This week I gave a pretest on visual
thinking. I’ll give the same activity at
the end of the unit and see if the children do better. These units will be repeated in some fashion
all the way through fifth grade.
Children develop skills and build on them in the coming years.
I also introduced pentominoes. Pentominoes are puzzle pieces made with five
one-inch squares. There are a total of
12 possible ways to combine the five pieces, allowing for there to always be
one full side of each square touching at least one other square. Now that we’ve found all 12 possible pieces
we’ll use these to solve other puzzles.
This week we began a unit on Systems of the
Human Body. This week we began learning
about the skeletal system. We’ll also be
learning about the digestive, circulatory and nerve/brain systems.
Next week, we’ll begin the pentominoe
puzzles, work a Max puzzle and put together our skeletons that we cut out last
week and begin labeling the bones of the human body.
Second Grade – Tuesday Mornings
Last week was all about research. Everyone was able to use a computer to look
up their topic and we worked together to gather information for our game
boards. The students are learning to
pick and choose what information they need and what is “extra”
information. The students should
continue to gather information that will become the game cards on our Monopoly game.
I am sorry to have missed the children this
week, but next week, we’ll finish making the game cards and then when we return
from break, we’ll make the game board and write the rules of the game.
Third Grade
– Tuesday Afternoons
Math around the World took us to the game of Kahal. Many of you know this game as Mancala. The students have hopefully asked you to play
with them. Ella Greenberg was our
champion of the Kalah tournament.
Our next activity is called Hanoi’s
tower. This will be introduced next
week.
Fourth Grade – Monday Afternoons
The trial was wonderful. I am so proud of how the children handled
themselves and solved the problems they ran into on their own. We will have to have a retrial on one of the
murder counts, as the jury could not come to a unanimous decision on the death
of one of the pigs. We will conduct the retrial
in an open forum so that students can problem solve together on how the
witnesses, lawyers and jury could have better used the information they were
given to come to a decision. I am
excited to see how this goes. It’s
difficult to let the children take the lead, but they have shown they are more
than capable.
Fifth Grade – Wednesday Afternoons
This week the children were introduced to our
wonderful tax system. We looked at four
different scenarios and calculated their tax liability based on their gross
income. We’ve covered a lot of
information that may be confusion, but I promise we’ll continue to review past
learning as we move forward with this unit.
I also paired the students for the next Stock
Market Game which runs Feb. 2 – April 10.
The students should be tracking about five stocks (they can do more), so
that when it comes time to invest, we’re ready to go.
Next week we’ll finish the tax lesson, and
then when we return in January I’ll be assigning the career research
project.
