The students spent part of the last two days sharing persuasive essays. Following the model in the children’s book I Wanna Iguana, students wrote back and forth to each other in their “Writing Coaches” corresponding journals. The writing was terrific and students stuck to our model of Claim-Evidence-Reasoning-Closure.
Students wrote from the perspective of pillows, tennis balls, favorite pets, celebrities, and family members.
This week we leveraged many of the elements of Google Classroom including building presentations for our Great American Day, taking a quiz with Google Forms, reviewing geography with http://www.earth-picker.com/ and Google Maps, and sharing data via Google Sheets. Taken together, we were able to blend our learning and reach outcomes not possible just a few years ago.
We continued our exploration of chemistry by looking closely at how things can be put together and taken apart. Further, we worked with creating a solution and then discovering the saturation point. Students are building a important bank of understanding around dissolving, evaporation, saturation, mixture and solution.
Thank you families for all of your help in making the afternoon a lot of fun!
Today we started our investigation of Mixtures and Solutions. The 5th grade chemistry we are doing is about learning that matter has structure and change can take place within that structure. The work we started will build a strong foundation for students when they move to middle school and high school.
Although it was just a four day week, and student hadn’t been in school for 23 consecutive days, we got a lot done! We learned to multiply decimals and relate this to our understanding of fractions. We studied surrealism, sensory details, and word play as we moved further into the Phantom Tollbooth. We wrote with an emphasis on tone. We did a close read as we started our work with We the People. And we began a Doodles Academy Project.
Thank you families for helping with our white elephant holiday book exchange. The kids were able to sort through a number of terrific titles and best of all, everyone has something to read during the vacation.
Our winter break begins tomorrow but before tracking off, we fit in our holiday celebration. Thank you to all the parents who helped put the experiences together. And thank you for bringing in such great food!
Today we visited Betsy Caughlin Donnelly Park to work with the Truckee Meadows Park Foundation and to learn more about arthropods. Students had already done some initial studies on arthropods so the trip focused on finding arthropods and learning more about their local habitats.
The kids were persistent! Despite the challenge of finding the arthropods, the students spent over an hour, lifting rocks, shaking trees, and using aspirators to collect what they could locate.
Apart from the scientific aims, students are also learning more about being citizen scientists and how the general public can help with data collection.
Today marked the beginning of Computer Science Education Week and, as part of it, we completed an Hour of Code. This is a state supported and nationwide movement to honor the value of coding and make it more accessible to students. You can learn more about it from the Nevada Department of Education’s press release here.
As an extra incentive, we Tweeted to Golden State Warrior Steph Curry our efforts. Curry has promised to select a classroom that participates in the Hour of Code and video conferencing with them.
Room 360 