1. Field Trip:
We will be kicking off our next PBL Unit with a field trip to Costco headquarters in Issaquah! We had a wonderful experience last year and are looking forward to our second trip. Toy buyers will teach us about their toy buying process, marketing, and even allow the kids to check out all of the holiday season 2013 toys and prototypes they are looking at! Students will also be assigned a special task that supports our learning objectives back at school. This trip will create excitement for our unit and teach us skills and information we will apply throughout our PBL unit!
Request: Because of ridiculously expensive bus costs, we will need to plan a caravan. If you have a car that can hold a bunch of kids and are willing to drive and chaperon this trip-please email me and let me know that you are willing, and how many KIDS you can hold! I'd love to give parents who haven't been able to attend a field trip yet this year first dibs, but, car capacity will also be a factor as we can't take an army of cars to park at Costco ;)
2. Reading Update: We are on Day 10 of our Poppy literature study and the kids are loving it! We are using the "CIA" approach, and are currently in the "C" work which stands for "collect." We are busy collecting information in our notebooks about story elements such as character, setting, and problems. We are using knowledge of our book's genre "Fantasy-talking animals" to help us understand what elements are the most important to focus on. We have learned that in this genre, character is the most important. Students are responsible to write everything I record on our anchor charts in to their notebooks. We are really working on writing stamina, neatness, and organization! Today we talked about writing that is persuasive and convincing. Students wrote about who they believe should have to confront Mr. Ocax and had to be persuasive-ask them about it! When we reach the end of the first quarter of the book, students will have a larger writing assignment to complete.
3. Math Update: We have assessed on fractions and I'm working on printing progress reports to send home. Our new unit is the study of measurement: time, perimiter/area, liquid volume/mass, and data. All of our operational, computational, and problem solving skills are coming in to play as we navigate these topics! Students have made important connections and have pointed out that we have used our knowledge of geometry and fractions as we learn about measuring time!
To support us at home, ask you student to tell you the current time to the nearest half hour and quarter hour. We will be diving in to "elapsed time" this week and you can extend our practice by discussing elapsed time at home, as well!
Examples: "How much time has passed since______?"
"How long before________?"
"How many minutes are left in the hour?"
Here is a co-created anchor chart from our math lesson today. We brainstormed with partners first, then collectively as a group. Look at what the kids came up with! We have some research to do as kids are excited to find more cool ways of measuring time with different units. Our next steps are to talk about converting time between these different units.
We will be kicking off our next PBL Unit with a field trip to Costco headquarters in Issaquah! We had a wonderful experience last year and are looking forward to our second trip. Toy buyers will teach us about their toy buying process, marketing, and even allow the kids to check out all of the holiday season 2013 toys and prototypes they are looking at! Students will also be assigned a special task that supports our learning objectives back at school. This trip will create excitement for our unit and teach us skills and information we will apply throughout our PBL unit!
Request: Because of ridiculously expensive bus costs, we will need to plan a caravan. If you have a car that can hold a bunch of kids and are willing to drive and chaperon this trip-please email me and let me know that you are willing, and how many KIDS you can hold! I'd love to give parents who haven't been able to attend a field trip yet this year first dibs, but, car capacity will also be a factor as we can't take an army of cars to park at Costco ;)
2. Reading Update: We are on Day 10 of our Poppy literature study and the kids are loving it! We are using the "CIA" approach, and are currently in the "C" work which stands for "collect." We are busy collecting information in our notebooks about story elements such as character, setting, and problems. We are using knowledge of our book's genre "Fantasy-talking animals" to help us understand what elements are the most important to focus on. We have learned that in this genre, character is the most important. Students are responsible to write everything I record on our anchor charts in to their notebooks. We are really working on writing stamina, neatness, and organization! Today we talked about writing that is persuasive and convincing. Students wrote about who they believe should have to confront Mr. Ocax and had to be persuasive-ask them about it! When we reach the end of the first quarter of the book, students will have a larger writing assignment to complete.
3. Math Update: We have assessed on fractions and I'm working on printing progress reports to send home. Our new unit is the study of measurement: time, perimiter/area, liquid volume/mass, and data. All of our operational, computational, and problem solving skills are coming in to play as we navigate these topics! Students have made important connections and have pointed out that we have used our knowledge of geometry and fractions as we learn about measuring time!
To support us at home, ask you student to tell you the current time to the nearest half hour and quarter hour. We will be diving in to "elapsed time" this week and you can extend our practice by discussing elapsed time at home, as well!
Examples: "How much time has passed since______?"
"How long before________?"
"How many minutes are left in the hour?"
Here is a co-created anchor chart from our math lesson today. We brainstormed with partners first, then collectively as a group. Look at what the kids came up with! We have some research to do as kids are excited to find more cool ways of measuring time with different units. Our next steps are to talk about converting time between these different units.
4. Dwankhozi Hope Event:
Students are bringing home a half-sheet flyer today to announce an even I hope you can attend. Here is the text in case it is lost en route :) As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am traveling to Zambia with this incredible organization in June to do some exciting work. I hope you will attend and learn how you can support this mission! It will be brief and inspiring:
Did you know that QAE started a partnership with a school in rural Zambia last year called Dwankhozi Basic School? Many of our students have been introduced to the school by viewing a video about Martin, an inspirational young man attending school in Zambia. This year, we have exchanged video introductions and letters with the students at Dwankhozi and met Moses, a school leader that visited QAE in the fall. This summer, several QAE staff will travel to Zambia to further our relationship with Dwankhozi Basic School. We could not be more excited to meet the community itself and team with World Reader to discuss ways to strengthen literacy in schools throughout the region. We hope to strengthen this partnership and discover ways we can help teach and learn from each other for years to come.
This Friday we are holding an event in our lunchroom right after school to formally introduce our partnership with Dwankhozi Basic School to our parent community, show the video that has inspired many of us to become involved in furthering this relationship and share information with you about how you can support this work. Please join us on February 22nd right after school in the lunchroom.
Friday, February 22nd
4:00 PM
QAE lunchroom
Last Request:
We are revamping our End-of-Day routine, and reading log routine. Please help support your learner by reminding them to bring their orange folders to school each day, their reading book back and forth if they are working on reading "whole chapter books," and to turn in and grab a new reading log each Friday.
Supporting learning at home with Brainpop, Dreambox, Raz-Kids, or Khan Academy is encouraged! Try replacing some screen time each day with one of these high-quality programs.
Thank you for all that you do!
(Please excuse any typos-I did a brief edit as I'm off to a meeting!)
Students are bringing home a half-sheet flyer today to announce an even I hope you can attend. Here is the text in case it is lost en route :) As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am traveling to Zambia with this incredible organization in June to do some exciting work. I hope you will attend and learn how you can support this mission! It will be brief and inspiring:
Did you know that QAE started a partnership with a school in rural Zambia last year called Dwankhozi Basic School? Many of our students have been introduced to the school by viewing a video about Martin, an inspirational young man attending school in Zambia. This year, we have exchanged video introductions and letters with the students at Dwankhozi and met Moses, a school leader that visited QAE in the fall. This summer, several QAE staff will travel to Zambia to further our relationship with Dwankhozi Basic School. We could not be more excited to meet the community itself and team with World Reader to discuss ways to strengthen literacy in schools throughout the region. We hope to strengthen this partnership and discover ways we can help teach and learn from each other for years to come.
This Friday we are holding an event in our lunchroom right after school to formally introduce our partnership with Dwankhozi Basic School to our parent community, show the video that has inspired many of us to become involved in furthering this relationship and share information with you about how you can support this work. Please join us on February 22nd right after school in the lunchroom.
Friday, February 22nd
4:00 PM
QAE lunchroom
Last Request:
We are revamping our End-of-Day routine, and reading log routine. Please help support your learner by reminding them to bring their orange folders to school each day, their reading book back and forth if they are working on reading "whole chapter books," and to turn in and grab a new reading log each Friday.
Supporting learning at home with Brainpop, Dreambox, Raz-Kids, or Khan Academy is encouraged! Try replacing some screen time each day with one of these high-quality programs.
Thank you for all that you do!
(Please excuse any typos-I did a brief edit as I'm off to a meeting!)