It is good to be back with a full week ahead of us in this new year. Between vacation and snow/cold days and guest teachers due to Ms. Belle's absence last week, things have been a bit uneven. We're reclaiming our routines, habits and focus for the challenging work ahead.
Physical education was great fun today, with the apparatus set up in a darkened gymnasium. Ask a student about the story behind their obstacle course this year.
In Math, we are working hard to understand the multiplication of fractions by making area models. Students learn to draw taking a part of a part to give them a visual basis to understand the operation itself. We are tackling some tricky bar-modeling problems, and although not all students can do them independently, we are all understanding the steps as we do some of them together. Many adults would be hard pressed to solve the problems we are tackling.
Our culminating activity for our Esperanza Rising/Human Rights unit is an essay we have been working on this week. Students are using information from the text to explain challenges that Esperanza faced during the book, and how her responses to these challenges show what kind of a person she is. The essay will serve as a good snapshot of student writing, and will be evaluated, discussed, and sent home.
We are taking a brief pause in our blogging to regroup with some writing lessons before posting more blogs. In the meantime, we are focusing on improving the last set of submitted blogs and commenting on each other's pieces. We hope to find a class to pair with, perhaps in another country, so we can have a wider audience for our blogs.
Students are working with Mr. Anderson to study Latin American geography. They have a project due this Friday.
Tomorrow is our bowl-a-thon fundraiser. We hope to have fun as we earn money!
Physical education was great fun today, with the apparatus set up in a darkened gymnasium. Ask a student about the story behind their obstacle course this year.
In Math, we are working hard to understand the multiplication of fractions by making area models. Students learn to draw taking a part of a part to give them a visual basis to understand the operation itself. We are tackling some tricky bar-modeling problems, and although not all students can do them independently, we are all understanding the steps as we do some of them together. Many adults would be hard pressed to solve the problems we are tackling.
Our culminating activity for our Esperanza Rising/Human Rights unit is an essay we have been working on this week. Students are using information from the text to explain challenges that Esperanza faced during the book, and how her responses to these challenges show what kind of a person she is. The essay will serve as a good snapshot of student writing, and will be evaluated, discussed, and sent home.
We are taking a brief pause in our blogging to regroup with some writing lessons before posting more blogs. In the meantime, we are focusing on improving the last set of submitted blogs and commenting on each other's pieces. We hope to find a class to pair with, perhaps in another country, so we can have a wider audience for our blogs.
Students are working with Mr. Anderson to study Latin American geography. They have a project due this Friday.
Tomorrow is our bowl-a-thon fundraiser. We hope to have fun as we earn money!