Hello Everyone!

We have had a wonderful week in the classroom! The class is working hard, but they also know how to have fun together.  Here is a run-down of our academics this week:

Math: We are starting double digit multiplication! This sounds a lot scarier than it is, and we will take it one step at a time. This week, we worked hard to understand that 13 X 8 is the same thing as 10 X 8 PLUS 3 X 8.  As I always tell the students, 10 is our best friend, and breaking double digit numbers into tens and ones makes everything easier.  Some students still prefer to draw out their equations and count by ones, and this is perfectly okay and developmentally appropriate. But we will keep pushing into more efficient strategies as they are able to understand them conceptually. 

Reading: Our work this week was all about figuring out how the characters in our book are complicated, just like real people. We thought about ourselves and how we are complicated -- for example, we are different at school than we are with our cousins or our friends. The character in our read-aloud book, Ghost, is also complicated. The students are working to figure out how the characters in the books they are reading are multi-faceted and complicated as well.  

Writing: Today we started writing the drafts of our narrative stories, and the class is so excited! They have done a lot of planning -- thinking about their characters, their problems and the scenes that make up the story arc. Now they are ready to get writing! Next we will tackle the hardest parts of writing -- revision and elaboration!

Science: Thanks to many flower and plant donations, today we dissected flowers (I totally forgot to take pictures!) We identified roots, leaves, stems, and flowers and discussed their functions. Then each student got to dissect 2 flowers and discover the goodies inside. Mr. Bouchard brought in his digital microscope so we could REALLY see the stamen, pistil, stigma, seeds, etc.  I was impressed by how much the class already knew, but there was a lot of new learning as well. Next week, we will get to make our individual terrariums, complete with little plants!

Social Studies: This week we learned about implicit bias. We learned that we all carry opinions and attitudes that come from somewhere -- the media, advertisements, friends, family, etc. We got into a wonderful conversation about advertising and the notion of beauty. These kids are perceptive! Then yesterday we revisited our identity maps and tried to make a distinction between the parts of our identities that we really own and the parts that others have "labeled" us with. This was heady work, but I was proud of the deep thinking the students did!

Today we also made some harvest crafts. Forgive me if you get straw all over your house this evening!  Our little terracotta pot scarecrows are perhaps a little messy... you should see the classroom floor!

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Halloween weekend.