Newsletter: The Week in Photos

This is Meredith Jones. She will be our MAT next semester. She stopped in on
Thursday to say hello and introduce herself. We can't wait to get to know her.

Share Fair - Teaching parents and other kids about animals and research

Mr. Johnson's class spent about half an hour visiting our projects.

The kids scale drawings of their animals were on display as well as the
non-fiction books they wrote. 

They were in the Gathering Room presenting for an hour and twenty minutes.
That's a lot of sharing!

These sorts of experiences help the kids learn to become increasingly
comfortable speaking to groups of people - or just one.

We continued our exploration of division this week. After estimating how
many raisins they thought were in a half ounce box they opened the lid to count
how many were on the top layer. Using that information they made a
second estimate. We listed these on the board and found the range of our estimates.

After the two rounds of estimates the kids opened their boxes and counted
the raisins. We found out not every box has the same number of raisins. This
is because they are packaged by weight, not quantity. 

I asked them to put their raisins on a sheet of paper and group them in a
way that would allow me to quickly see how many raisins they had
in their box. People grouped them by twos, threes, fives, and tens.
Many of the boxes required a remainder. We've been working to
divide numbers with a remainder.

Many of the kids reported out how they had grouped their raisins and we
recorded these on the board.

Their next task was to figure out how many raisins their entire table had. This
required some strategy and a whole lot of teamwork. 

Once they had that total they were given the task of dividing the raisins
equally between them. The last item was to eat the raisins. We did lots of handwashing
throughout the whole exploration!

We also played a game called Remainder. In this game, the kids used a dice,
blocks, and slips of paper to divide and find remainders. Along the way they
recorded which problems did not have any remainders at all. These problems
were studied to look for patterns.

They recorded their work in their notebooks as they played. Some
miscues were made along the way but we all understand that is a
natural part of learning - not just in math, but in life.

This was our last week with the USC Tall Teachers.

The tall teachers shared a favorite book with them and presented them
with cards and appreciations.

We might have Tall Teachers again in the spring. If so, it will be a different
batch of undergrads.

If we do have Tall Teachers again (they'll either work with our kids or
Ms. Whitecotton's kids) the undergrads will spend about half an hour
observing our whole group mini-lessons and then working one-on-one
with the kids for another half an hour.

They would work with the kids as readers on Mondays and then again as
writers on Wednesdays. It's so wonderful to have these undergrads
as resources who can offer the kids their full attention and
support for an extended period of time.

The kids also presented their Native American group projects to the class.

Groups studied the Cherokee, Catawba, Yemassee, and Edisto tribes.