Newsletter: February 6th

Dear Families,

This week I'm going to focus on the work we're doing as mathematicians. In addition to reviewing skills such as telling time, counting money, and regrouping, we've also launched a recent inquiry into geometry. Geometry is always a whole lot of fun. It provides opportunities to tap into our spatial intelligence while creating, describing, comparing and contrasting, and more. Geometry also introduces the kids to challenges that seem on the surface to be very simple but, in fact, require a great deal of perseverance.

On our first day, I posed a challenge to the kids called "The Rocket." For this engagement, the kids were each given a 4"x 4" square of yellow paper and told they needed to make the appropriate folds and cuts to create a rocket identical to the one I posted on the board at the front of the classroom. "That'll be so easy!" many exclaimed. Well, it was not. There were many trials as the kids kept recycling the paper from their unsuccessful attempts and pulling out a new square to start all over. Of course, an "unsuccessful" attempt is not unsuccessful at all so long as you learn something from it that can help you come closer to the solution on the next attempt. This was what I was watching for - who made random attempts and who worked strategically to learn something new from each one. I was also watching to see who would stick with it and who might be quick to want to give up.

After around ten minutes of work, I pulled the kids back to the carpet to think through the problem at hand. We looked carefully at the rocket and counted how many different shapes we needed, what types of shapes they were, and what sizes they were relative to one another. Knowing this information helped provide greater focus to our attempts. In the end, a handful of the kids were able to figure it out. We came back together and I showed them how it was done. We also discussed the fact it wasn't all that important whether or not they were able to make the rocket. What was most important was that they learned to work carefully and strategically - observing and naming the specific qualities of the shape and then working their hardest to replicate it.

Our second engagement (just today) had us making a series of folds on another yellow square. You can see an example of this in the pic above. Once the folds were made I challenged the kids to make as many different shapes as they could by creasing one or more of the folds. The polygons they made and then traced onto their paper needed to be different in either shape or size from all the others they had already recorded. They were paired with a partner for this work. As I observed during this engagement I watched again for who was working carefully and with purpose (studying previous shapes and thinking about what they could change to create a brand new one) as well as who was working collaboratively and who was not. Some of the pairs talked through what they had and offered up new ideas to one another. Other pairs worked silently and independently without any sort of collaborative effort. When not working together, they would often wind up breaking one of the rules of the challenge (such as "Don't make any new folds to the paper") or tracing multiple copies of the exact same shape. We stopped midway through to discuss the role of partnerships and how they might work successfully with a partner to think up together.

We'll keep at this work tomorrow as we make a class chart of all the shapes they created then begin giving mathematical names to these - such as hexagon, pentagon, quadrilateral, and so on. We'll continue this inquiry into geometry for another couple weeks. This work will lead us into some exploratory work with fractions as well. That's another really fun topic to study!

One other item of interest I'd like to share this week is a reminder about our Friendship Day letters that are due next Tuesday. Today the kids helped to create a list of appreciations for each of the people in our classroom. I then modeled how they might use some of the ideas on these sheets to create a Friendship Day letter for their secret pal. I wrote my model letter to Mrs. Palmatier since so many of the kids are really familiar with her. You can see this letter above. It has a miscue - of course! I told the kids I'd have to have my mom look over it for me so I can make any other necessary changes before giving it to Mrs. Palmatier. They are coming home today with everything they need for their own letters. These are due back next Tuesday. Please help them do a careful job. They'll be so proud to share them, I know!

That's it. I hope you all are having a wonderful week and enjoying this spring weather. Recess has been perfect!

Chris