A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of March 4

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” -Benjamin Franklin

This week we completed our Wax Museum research! We have been working hard on this project since our first day back in January! Whenever we begin a large project like this, we spend a lot of time sharing tips and tricks with newer students to get them started on the right path. We discuss how to plan our time and how much work to complete each day in order to stay on top of things and to remain successful. It is a great learning experience for all when older students share what they did that was successful last year and what they did in the past that led them to fall behind or to have to redo a portion of a large project. We give each student an outline of due dates and also display those dates on a classroom calendar for students to review whenever necessary. Our newer students have benefited from the examples of research cards that we displayed each week with each new topic. We invited students each day to a “Wax Museum Workshop” to work with teachers and peers to focus on a specific part of our project. I have included a little sneak peek into some backdrops, but you are going to be so impressed with the hard work your child has accomplished over these last two months! We can’t wait for you to join us on Monday, March 18, at 6 pm!

These third year students are using the dictionary to find the difference between two homographs. During our lesson they realized homographs are spelled the same, but have different pronunciations and different definitions! Learning homographs helps these students with their narrative writing and spelling!
Our third year students have been working for a few months to study equivalence, congruence, and similarity between shapes. After introducing these concepts, we studied the relationships between our Constructive Triangle Boxes. Now, we are continuing to study the relationships between our shapes in our Metal Insets Cabinet. This student is proving how a trapezoid can be equivalent to a rectangle. We found that the rectangle was half the height of the trapezoid and its base was the same length as the major base of the trapezoid added to its minor base!
These first year students were traced by friends and have drawn the skeleton of the human body. They have worked hard to correctly label each part of the skeleton and to draw the bones to fit inside their traced body! In third grade, we spend the entire year studying the human anatomy and the students always recall their first year skeleton lessons!

 

Here is your sneak peek into our Wax Museum backdrops! Cleopatra and her friends are excited to meet you!

“A Peek into Next Week”

Next week, we will be practicing our speeches daily to memorize them by March 18. Many students have already been practicing. Each student that completed their speech should have brought home a copy already within the last few weeks. If they did not, please remind your child to bring their home copy Monday at dismissal. Next week, our first years will be introduced to the history of metric measurement, will learn about synonyms, will continue studying straight lines on the same plane, and will begin their research of simple machines! Our second year students will add decimals, will practice comma rules, will begin studying polygons, and will review flower completeness. Our third year students will learn to cross multiply, will link history to language with a study of pronouns and verbs in different tenses, will continue studying the equivalence of our Metal Insets, and will study arthropods. Our fourth year students will study puns (my favorite), will continue subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, and will bisect the height of triangles to find the area. Our fifth year students will study cause and effect in writing, will discuss the imperative mood of verbs, and will continue studying square roots!

REMINDERS:

  • If you are able, please sign up to donate something for our Wax Museum Bake Sale here!
  • WAX MUSEUM – Monday, March 18 – 6 pm! Please invite your family and friends!
  • SPRING BREAK – Thursday, March 21 – Friday, March 29
  • We are in need of some parent volunteers to teach typing. We need parents each Friday that we have school from 8:45 – 11:00. We set up two laptops in the Enrichment Room and send two students at a time to practice typing. If you are interested in volunteering, you would need to help students log in to their account on Typing.com and make sure they are using proper hand placement on the keyboard. Our students have been doing this for a few months and are very used to the procedure so they can offer any tips if you need them! Please sign up here if you are interested!

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