Newsletter: November 29, 2012

Dear Families,

                This was an awfully busy week. For starters, we finished our study of the American Revolution. This began by looking at the creation of our colony. One of our resources, Social Studies Weekly, had a graph sharing the population of the South Carolina colony throughout the early years. It was titled “People Living in South Carolina.” It showed that in 1670 there were about 200 people living in this colony. That was somewhat surprising given there were at least 29 different tribes of Native Americans living here at the time. Wouldn’t it be safe to assume there were probably well more than 1,000 Native Americans in South Carolina? It turns out they were not included in this population tally. We wondered why they were not considered “people”.

Our study of the American Revolution centered on anger created by the Stamp Act and the Tea Tax. Everyone was particularly interested to learn about the Boston Tea Party. Though this falls outside the scope of South Carolina history it is still quite important in understanding the mood that caused so many colonists to fight for independence. We also found that some colonists remained loyal to England while others were unsure what to believe.

Next week we will shift our focus away from historical studies and begin inquires into motion and sound. Motion is always fun because we get to observe, measure, and manipulate the movement of objects while working to construct, or at least validate, laws of motion. We will drop, roll, push, pull, and throw a whole variety of objects to see what we can find. Late next week the kids will choose a question they want to explore through experimentation and demonstration. Once they settle on a question, such as Do all objects fall at the same rate?, they will develop an experiment they can conduct to help them move closer to an answer. They will conduct these experiments at home and come back ready to share the results with photos, video, PPT, or a live demonstration.  I will send more information about this late next week.

In math we have been playing around with measurement. We began by measuring all sorts of our things using non-standard units of measure – digits, palms, spans, cubits, and fathoms. You’ll have to ask your child for a demonstration. Using what we have been learning about fractional parts, the kids represented their measurements as such: 6 ½ palms, 2 1/5 fathoms, etc. Finding these fractional parts was quite challenging in that they had to use their spatial abilities (in this case visualizing) to determine the appropriate fraction.

After a few days with these units we switched to standard units such as inches, feet, and yards. We learned you can represent measurements as either 1 1/3 yards or 1 yard and 1 foot. We also learned that you don’t really need to measure each object three times. If you know how many feet there are you should be able to  calculate both the number of inches and the number of yards. This was very challenging but each of the kids made it their own depending on their current abilities to develop strategies for such problems.

We have also been hard at work on our biography expert projects. Look for their rough drafts to come home next Monday. I’m asking them to look these drafts over with you with an eye out for missing information as well as basic edits and revisions. We’ll need those back on Wednesday to begin publishing. We’ll do the bulk of the publishing at school given they have worked this week to publish a piece at home already.

Please remember we are saying goodbye to Ms. Ruff on Thursday. We’ll be awfully sad to see her go!

Have a great weekend,

Chris

Homework: November 26 - December 3, 2012

1. Bring home your math test from last week and show your parents all the problems you knew how to solve. Then look at the ones you struggled with and ask them to help you figure out how to find the solution. Have them initial next to each problem they help you with. Please DO NOT do this at after care. I really want your parents to have the opportunity to work with you. The goal is not to correct the test as much as it is to learn HOW to solve these problems.

2. Bring home your story drafts and ask a parent to edit and revise with you. Complete your final draft. This can be written by hand or typed on the computer. It is okay to let your parents help you type portions of the story so long as the words are all yours. If anyone can get this back to school by Thursday Ms. Ruff would love to use it as part of her presentation to the other MATs at USC on Friday. However, this is not a requirement.

These assignments are due back on Monday.

Thanks,
Mr. H

Newsletter: November 20, 2012

What a short week! We have spent these past two days reading, continuing work around fractions of a set, talking about events leading up to the American Revolution, and finishing up writing drafts that were inspired by each student's favorite author.

Today during Morning Meeting one of our classmates shared that she has been noticing some people messing around during the Pledge of Allegiance. Other times she has noticed some people just stand but don't say the pledge. This led us to discuss the following questions:

What are our expectations of one another during the pledge?

What is the reason for the pledge? (revisiting an earlier discussion from a few months ago)
Why do we do it every single morning?
Why don't our parents say the pledge at their jobs?
Should everyone have to say it?

I asked the kids to talk with you about these questions to see what you think. We shared a number of different arguments and counterarguments but didn't settle on much other than the fact everyone should be respectful of those around them by remaining both silent and calm.We thought it might be interesting to have Dr. Mueller in to see what she thinks. We also talked about taking these questions to the Student Voice Committee and posing them out to the whole school. We would all love to see our fellow classes spend some time talking about the pledge so that it can be a more meaningful daily activity.

We had a special treat today. Actually, we had two. First, Enock came back to visit us from Georgia. He spent the whole day which felt absolutely wonderful! Everyone was very excited to reconnect with an old friend. Second, two of our parent volunteers brought in muffins and hot chocolate to enjoy during silent reading time.

As always, thank you so much for trusting me with your children.  I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.

Chris

Homework: November 12 - 19, 2012

1. Nightly reading and log
2. Nightly review of the 7-time tables.
3. On Friday the kids will bring home their research materials alongside a list of questions they are still working to answer. Please help them look through their books in search of this information.

Each of these assignments is due next Monday.

2012 CFI Election

Today our class worked  to conduct a school-wide CFI  presidential election. The kids delivered ballots to the other classrooms, staying to monitor the voting process. We then tallied the results back in our room. After counting the votes for each class, the numbers were combined to create grade level totals. We found  ten classrooms favored Barack Obama while two favored Mitt Romney.

Next, we used survey data on the ballots to see which classes were most informed as to how their parents were planning to vote on Tuesday.

Lastly, we tallied up totals by gender. The results were amazingly even. Both boys and girls favored Barack Obama by a similar margin.

After a celebratory pizza party everyone headed out to create bar graphs to share with the school. This process was a bit challenging (everything had to be 100% correct) but everything came together just in time to post in the entrance hallway before dismissal.

There were a few irregularities. For a time we thought one class had cast 23 votes despite having only 22 students. We also noticed Mrs. Barnes totals (20 for Obama and 1 for Romney) seemed awfully out of place when looking at patterns across the school. We'll have to investigate a bit to see why this might have happened. Perhaps the results will be contested!

Newsletter: November 2, 2012

Dear Families,

I hope you are all ready for our class camping trip on Saturday. I know the kids are very excited. Again, the general plan for the day/night is:

3 - 4        Arrive at the park. Drive back to the group/scout area to drop off your things.
4 - 4:45   Class kickball game. I'll take the kids for the game while you either watch, play, or settle in.
5 - 5:45   Small group activities - fishing, collecting firewood, nature art, scavenger hunt
6:00         Dinner
7:00         Night Hike
8:00        Campfire
10:00      Bed Prep
10:30      Kids in tents

The weather forecast looks pretty good. It's supposed to be in the 70s during the day and in the low 50s overnight. If you are planning to stay the night, be sure to bring warm PJs, a sleeping bag, and lots of warm blankets. If you have an air mattress this would be a good idea as well. We'll have muffins and juice in the morning.

Here are some highlights from from the past week or two...

A lot of the kids have been working on independent research projects during Exploration time. This is purely optional. Topics have ranged from the Titanic to Big Foot to the Grand Canyon.

Of course, a staple of Exploration is finding news articles to share with the class. We worked during Social Studies this week to learn how to selectively highlight the most important words and phrases - rather than entire sentences and paragraphs. This is a growing skill that will serve us well as we begin our expert projects next week.

Reading is another favorite during Exploration time. Since much of our daily silent reading time is independent, Explorations offers an opportunity to read alongside friends without worry of distracting others from their books.

Here is our math journal. The kids often like to pose challenging math problems that relate to the work we've been doing in class.

A favorite math game is Addition Top-It. It is much like the traditional game of "war" but in this version you flip 2, 3, or 4 cards at a time, add them together, and see who wins. Soon we'll be playing Multiplication Top-It.

It's always fun when someone brings in a book from home that relates to what we've been learning. Here you can see a book about fractions.

Morning Meeting is our time to share all these things. It generally begins by 8:30 and concludes around 8:50 or so.

We had a special visitor this week. Dr. Julia Lopez-Robertson visited us from USC. Adding to our conversations around other cultures and the idea of "normal", she talked about how she has been shaped by so many places and cultures. Her mother is from Columbia, her father is from Cuba, and she was born and raised in Boston. She has also lived in Arizona and, now, South Carolina. I realized how broad a term "culture" can be.

We sang her two of our favorite songs before giving her a copy of our class CD as a thank you gift for taking the time to visit us.

One of the kids came up and asked if we could have a group photo with Dr. Lopez-Robertson.

In writing we have been learning to read like a writer. By this we mean read not for a sense of story but to see what specific craft moves the author is using to make their writing sound so nice. Each day we have noticed a number of these craft moves and then each of the kids selected one or two to try in their own writing. Ms. Ruff, who is here Monday - Thursday for the next few weeks, is leading this inquiry.

Next Monday our class is conducting the CFI Presidential Election for Kids. We have already prepared the ballots and discussed our procedures. To help us better understand what we'll be helping the other students do, our class voted today. On Monday we'll tally the results from the school. In addition to the big result we will also be sorting this data into various categories, looking for trends, and working to develop theories to explain these trends. We'll also be exploring the different ways in which we can share this information with the school. If you'd like to see us share our results please join us in the Gathering Room around 2:30.

To help celebrate our work with the election I'm going to get pizza for the kids' lunch on Monday. You do not need to send anything in. However, if anyone is available to pick up and deliver the pizzas for us that would be great!

Thanks,
Chris