A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of September 18
This was an exciting week in our classroom. We tie dyed shirts, had our first Latin class, and are going on our first field trip! This week first year students began adding to their research skills by learning to alphabetize, discussing how to use a table of contents and index, and practicing how to paraphrase words to avoid plagiarism. Second year students practiced reading numbers on the Large Bead Frame, reviewed common and proper nouns, and looked at consecutive and adjacent line segments. These students discovered there are consecutive and adjacent line segments in many of the letters of the alphabet! The third year students reviewed rules for plurals of nouns, practiced greater than, less than, and equal to with fractions, looked at types of corolla, and explored similarity in geometry. Fourth year students discussed words coined by famous authors, looked at the history of the English language, created their own Multiplication Checkerboard, and discussed evolution of life theorists.
Our students made their own tie dye shirts for our field trips this year. Some students followed the directions to make certain patterns, while others created original designs! Our students are conducting an experiment about germs. We used two apples for our experiment. Half of one apple is our control and the other half was touched by students with dirty hands. The first half of the second apple was touched by students that washed their hands and the second half by students that used hand sanitizer. So far, the apple touched by students with clean hands has changed the least. The students are so interested to see our final results. Take a peek at drop off or pick up!These students are working to read numbers on our Multiplication Checkerboard. Students add beads to the squares and read the numeral they have created. These students made the number 999,999,999. After practice with this, students will begin multiplying on the Checkerboard.This student is doing subtraction on paper with the Stamp Game. In the Elementary classroom, students learn math concepts with our concrete materials. When they have mastered that material, the next step is solving an equation with the material and on paper, with pencil. The final step is complete abstraction of the concept, just on paper. This process leads to a deeper understanding of the “why” of math work.For International Peace Day, we discussed different peace makers and world changers. After our discussion, students made peace pinwheels. On one side of our pinwheels, we wrote what peace means to us and decorated the other side before turning them into pinwheels! Check them out near the playground before the weekend!
A Peek into Next Week
Next week Kids Bop begins! Lower Elementary students will make bar graphs, continue studying nouns, look at parts of a fruit, and experiment with an overflow basin. Upper Elementary students will work on word problems about money, practice note-taking, draw angles with a protractor, and will discuss ions and electron shells.
Next week the blog will be written by two students! Don’t miss a look into our room through their eyes!
