Thanks to everyone who made it out for Curriculum Night last night. That was a record crowd! I know the kids enjoyed sharing their work with you.
As I work to write progress reports over these few weeks, I will scale the newsletters back a bit. Here is a simple run down of what you should know:
Reading - This week we highlighted a different biography each day of the week. This was designed to support the work the kids have been doing at home to prepare a short biography of someone who has been largely overlooked by history. We will continue to read biographies next week in preparation for an upcoming expert/research project.
Writing - We are currently between units so we used some of this time to co-write our new song. We've been using the tune of Down on the Corner to create lyrics. The kids have worked in groups to write a verse or two and I will now take the next few weeks to weave their lyrics together and create an original tune for the song.
Math- We read a book called One Hundred Hungry Ants. It was about a group of 100 ants who were marching to a picnic. They kept stopping to reorganize themselves (divide) into different formations. For example, they began as one row of 100 (100 divided by 1 = 100), moved to two rows of 50 (100 divided by 2 = 50), tried four rows of 25 (100 divided by 4 = 25), and so on. The kids then worked in pairs to find all the possible ways of dividing other numbers of "ants" into rows. Rather than ants we used blocks and counters. This work required us to learn what a remainder is. You may have noticed this problem on the board last night: 17 divided by 3 = 5 r. 2. We'll continue with this work next week. Eventually these discussions and engagements will lead us to discuss fractions.
Social Studies - We've been researching different Native American tribes from South Carolina. We've also been reading/watching different texts about Christopher Columbus and wondering why one source might provide a different set of facts than another.
Next week...
Reading - biographies, reading goals, lots of independent reading (we're building up our reading endurance)
Writing - Reflecting on our growth as writers over the past year and setting goals for ourselves
Math - division
SS - Exploration in the "New World"/Motives/Colonization (does this exist anywhere today?)
Have a great weekend,
Chris
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