The Week Before Fall Break

So impressed with the students who took full advantage of the instructional time leading into Fall Break. From our News Director:

This is the seventh week of school and we have accomplished so much. Our reading skills have been boosted and many other skills have been sharpened.

Since this is almost the end of our second month, we are working on many interesting things. For math, we are working on multiplication with multidigit numbers using the standard algorithm. To practice ELA, we have been reading about Tom Sawyer and his adventures. For writing, we have been reading debates and picking a side and writing about it using I-CERC: introduction, claim, evidence, reasoning, and conclusion. We have also been learning high school level grammar. This is what happens on a normal day in Mr. Grossman’s class every day!

On Thursday September 29th, we were filmed in the classroom. Some of us got interviewed about our Five-Minute Plan. Our Five-Minute Plan is a list of 5 things that we do in the morning when we get to class. We had our first art class and learned about Cubism through Jacob Laurence’s art piece. We made pictures of rooms with a vanishing point.

This is what we have been doing for the last two weeks of school in Mr. Grossman’s class, as we get ready for the fall break.

Motoring Ahead

In just a week, the students begin their Fall Break. Amazing that is has arrived so quickly. In the last few weeks, we have demonstrated the ability to write multi-paragraph essays, multiply and divide decimals, understand the implications of the Earth rotating on an axis, built an understanding of indigenous groups in North and South America, and had way too many indoor recesses.

Diving into Content

The focus on routines and procedures, the first two weeks of the school year, paid off. Week three was about content. We started science and a focus on the Earth and the Sun. Using Microsoft Teams and the ability to upload our social studies textbook to the platform, we read about indigenous groups of North and South America. We added and subtracted decimals and continued to expand sentences, this time using subordinating conjunctions. We read about Antartica and water, from our adopted ELA materials, and we completed our first art project. Great week.

Near and Far

For this lesson, students selected a building they have visited or wanted to visit one day. To do this, they used Google Maps and the Street View. After drawing their building and adding details, they mixed colors to create a mood in the background. This was followed by selecting and applying analogous and complimentary colors for their building.

Enchanted Lands

We completed our Enchanted Lands project this week and the final pieces are terrific. We first explored the idea of background, midground, and foreground through classic pieces of art. Then we played a game in which students drew images matched to magical elements, they identified.

Their understanding was then leveraged to create art that included painting a setting and collaging. (Incidentally, thanks for all of the magazines!)

Working with Art Outcomes

It took several lessons but students finished their comic book covers. To get us there we studied several classic pieces of art through an instructional approach titled “careful observation.” We learned about silhouettes, types of shapes and lines, and the importance of have a backstory before drawing.

Students also learned different strategies for using water colors. This culminated in what you see below: a lot of great art!