Newsletter: March 1, 2017

Dear Families,

Before sharing news from the past week, I want to remind you that our class will be hosting Gathering next Friday, March 10. This will be our final Gathering of the year and the kids final Gathering with me. I really hope you can make it out to see them share some pretty cool work. Our focus will be on writing and history as the kids share their historical comics, perform many of the songs they wrote during our songwriting unit, and share information from their biographies. They have already begun work on the scripts and slides for Gathering and will be anxious to show you all they've been working on.

And now an update on a few of the studies we've been engaged in over the past week.

From Chris...
Having completed our inquiry into the American Revolution, we are now launching an Earth Science study of rocks, minerals, soil, and renewable and nonrenewable resources. To begin this study we began thinking of all the ways a geologist might describe a rock. The kids collaboratively compiled a list that included describing its: color, texture, size, weight, edges, luster, hardness, patterns, and minerals. They were then asked to work with a large rock in small groups to collect and record observational data for each of these categories. Ms. Wilson and I used their descriptions as a sort of game in which the class had to guess which rock was being described. We learned that careful observation and description of specific sorts of information help us to distinguish one rock from another.

Of course, some of these descriptors are not really that reliable. Particularly, the size of a rock is not that helpful because the same type of rock can be found in various sizes (from a whole mountain to the size of a pea). Over the coming days the kids will continue to learn how rocks are formed as well as the particular tests geologists perform to distinguish one rock (or mineral) from another.

We are also continuing work on our biographies. The kids have now completed their rough drafts and are sharing these with partners in the room for revision and editing notes. After they've completed this first round of revisions and edits they will send them on to Mrs. Shealy, Ms. Wilson, and me for additional suggestions. The plan is to complete our drafts by early next week so we can begin work on designing our book covers. Our art teacher, Mrs. Watkins, is coming in next week to teach the kids how to create a realistic portrait to place on their covers. Not only will this be fun but it will also be a great opportunity to learn about symmetry in relation to the layout of a person's face.

From Shanna...

In the previous week we have been learning about prefixes and root words.  We have been learning the meaning of various prefixes. Then we examined how those prefixes affected the root word. Some of the prefixes we have gone over in class are as follows...pre, un, dis, and re. While learning about prefixes, students went in search of their own words containing prefixes from their silent reading books.

Toward the end of the week we reviewed the words everyone found and discussed their meanings. We also talked about how coding and breaking words apart can help us later in the future when trying gain conceptual understanding.

After we finish our study on prefixes we will move on to suffixes.