More Connections

I have been really impressed with the connections the students have made to their Just Right Reading books.  Due to practice and sharing, students are explaining their connections more completely.  This morning we discussed a student's ‘text to text’ connection comparing A Stone Cutter’s Wishes to a quote from our read aloud Walk Two Moons.   “We don’t know the worth of water until the well runs dry” connects to how the Stone Cutter lived fantastical lives until he realized how nice it was to be just a stone cutter.  This type of textual connection really demonstrates deep thinking, and as a class we discussed how to develop this student's written connection more completely.  Expanding ideas is an ongoing focus.

Homework for Thursday, 9/30/10:

1.  Read for thirty minutes and complete reading log.

2.  Study for spelling test

*****fourth grade optional math homework through the weekend is to continue practicing array cards and playing multiplication.com

Have a nice night!

Jed

Strawberry Shows Independence and Responsibility

Not only have these last few days been positive and productive, Strawberry students are demonstrating responsibility and independence  For example, groups have been working on their map projects with worker bee-esque tenacity.  It's been an inspiration to witness.  When the projects are finished, they will be shared and displayed.  During this time we are also learning our states and their corresponding geographical features .  This study sets the foundation for our larger focus on Westward Movement, and questions such as Why do people move? and How did The West "come to be"?

Yesterday the students received their very own squishy ball learning tool.  These are quite useful to hold and squish during class meetings.  Strawberry Creek had a bin of squishy balls last year that were mostly torn up before the end, so we agreed as a community to distribute individual squish balls.  The students continue to use them responsibly.  In addition, each child is in charge of two pencils, and up to now not one has been misplaced!   Hopefully, we'll continue this positive trend.

Wednesday (9/29) homework is:

1.  Math for 4th graders

• Practice your math facts using your array cards with someone else (parent, sibling).  Make a "know it" pile and a "don't know it" pile based on whether you can say the fact within a "one-one thousand" count.  Practice for at least 10 minutes.
• Optional--go to the multiplication.com website to play multiplication games.  

    Fifth grade math homework click here.

2.  Read and fill out your reading log.

3.  Fill out your spelling sheet.

Tuesday's (9/28) homework is to

1.  Math (for 4th graders):

• Practice math array cards with an adult.
• Make "know it" and "don't know it" piles.
• Complete the math worksheet.

2.  Reading Log (same as last night)

3.  Spelling

Reminder--  Picture day is tomorrow.  Bring forms to school if you haven't already.

Heart in the Heat

 I hope everyone had a nice weekend.

We enjoyed hearing about soccer games played in hot weather during meeting this morning in addition to all of the exciting and enriching activities you do with your children.

By now Strawberry Creekers are accustomed to the routines and procedures of the day, and today ran particularly smoothly for a hot, hot Monday.  We're continuing our work on making connections while reading.  During reader's workshop, Amy and I listened to students read while others recorded their connections on stickies.  We'll post these new, creative connections in the blog this week.

We also diagramed the heart to kick off our study on circulatory systems.  We watched two movies about the heart and its functionality paying particulary attention to the role of valves, veins and arteries within the entire system.  Below are two student diagrams that were sketched today.












For the rest of the heart diagrams please click here.

Have a good night!

Jed

School Tour with our Buddies Today

This morning during our CerritoBerry meeting we learned the Fifty Nifty United States song and did some relaxing mindfulness training with Amber.


Next, we took our little buddies on a school tour.  Our own Lily of Strawberry Creek created the scavenger hunt booklets.  

 Each buddy group had to get a signature from a middle school teacher.  Here we see Strawberry Creekers and their buddies asking Tanya for a signature.

 .....and to look Cindy in the eye and say "hello"to get her signature...

.......tour the labyrinth.....

.....and get a signature from a teacher in the depot (in this case Mary Beth).







The rest of the pictures from the buddy tour is here.

On behalf of Strawberry Creek we wish you a wonderful weekend!

Jed

Tuesday, September 21

Today we had our first student-run morning meeting led by Strawberry Creek fifth grader, Lily Gee.  Lily created a handshake, greeting, read a story and taught us a fun, energizing acting game.  As the year goes on, there are lots of these types of leadership opportunities.  Here's a picture of Lily reading Dr. Suess's The Sneetches to the class.

We read quite an engaging memoir by Roald Dahl today titled "The Great Mouse Plot".  As we read the story, we used post-it notes to "interact with the text".  Below are some textual connections that were made:

During science we calculated and graphed our resting pulse and compared it to our pulse while running, jumping and walking.  We also calculated our stroke volume which is the amount of blood that's pumped through the heart each beat.   


Did you know that the average 4th and 5th grader pumps 5 liters of blood through their body per minute!


Have a great night!
Jed

Pancake Friday

Hey Strawberry Creekers! here is a pic from our pancake Friday! we had a lot of fun and thank you Jed,Riley, and Tyrrell for helping with the pancakes!

Yoga meditation hour

The last few days have been busy!!!

This week we had a long conversation about our classroom rules.  The major discussion was about whether “Making good choices” encompasses all the rules or not. 

One way of figuring out if 3 is a factor of 54 is to use these math manipulatives:

Fun outside:

Amber's mindfulness exercises:

Here's some pictures from our pancake breakfast:

And our Friday CerritoBerry meeting:

And visiting our buddies:

And for more pics from today click here.  And from the last couple of days click here.

Buddy sharing moments

These are our buddy differences and similarities. We are sharing them.

Yoga/Today

Welcome to the blog! Today we had our second yoga class and we were practicing our mindful practice. Amber is our yoga teacher for three more weeks and then she leaves. I'm really sad about that. Anyways Amber talks about calming things and noticing our breathing and the sounds of different bells ringing.

Today we also had P.E. playing games like octopus which is just like round up which we play almost every recess.

Sometimes for a warm-up game we play Creig's (the P.E. teacher) Red light green light. For a main game we played capture

the germ, which is exactly like capture the flag except with a addition; balls.

AIR (dun,dun,dun)

For our first science experiment we talked about air in a balloon and how the balloon keeps it's shape and what's happening inside the balloon. lots of the papers said that there was air molecules that push out from the balloon to keep the shape the hard question was "What about the outside air?"

Pictures and small comments about the first week of school

recess


doing dishes









Sitting in
circle->













Sitting in
circle->
hanging out!

Lake anza

Hello every one!
lake anza was a blast for me! though i was a little bit dissapointed about te one bus:(. what was your favorite part? (add a coment to say) i liked the swiming the best. a quick notification pack a BIG lunch next time! thanks!
this was just a quick reoprt!

The First Week Of School

Hi everybody,

This is Lily here.  I hope you had a great summer but now it’s time to get back the old days, school.

People and where they are:
So for the new school year we have two new students to TBS, Max and Marguax.  We have eight new fresh strawberries this year who all have the hang of TBS. small class of 18 this year, far from 21 last year.

What to do:
This year we are not going to research the gold rush, but fourth graders don’t worry you can do that next year. But, back to what we are doing this year is traveling from anywhere to California.
But not in our modern times, we are talking about way back when, before you were born. We are also going to work on (not literally) the human body (dun,dun,dun) we will be DISSECTING THE HUMAN BODY!!! Actually, no that would be humanly gross. We will be doing lots of writing, reading, drawing, etc…

Weather report:
Today we have cloudy with a chance of writing and lots of group activities!