Thank you all for your support and patience over the past several weeks. I will be adding a short recap of recent events here, and giving some previews of the next two weeks.
We got to share some of our work as engaged citizens with our grandparents when they came to visit a few weeks ago. It was a lovely day discussing Veteran's Day and considering what this day really means to us. We all learned something that day from the grandparents who joined us. We are so lucky to get to learn from the experience and the wisdom of our family members. Enjoy the photos of our discussions from that day!
Astronomy Articles
Over the past several weeks, Ms. Wilson and I got to enjoy planning, teaching and learning about all kinds of topics relating to astronomy and non-fiction writing as we jumped into our unit in Astronomy and Article Writing! Each of us chose a topic about our Universe that would serve as the foundation for some writing. Some students chose black holes, others quasars, and even some chose to delve into theories on the origins of galaxies! These topics paired well with the learning we were doing as a whole class about seasons, day and night, the moon, constellations, and our solar system.
To help us write these articles, we learned about different ways that authors organize their information. There are of course several different ways to organize writing, but we focused in on 5 that generally encompass most of the types: categorical/descriptive, sequential/chronological, compare & contrast, cause & effect, and problem & solution. We used these ways of thinking to read, learn, and even organize our own pieces of writing.
Math Update
Recently, we've been spending our time learning about parts of whole numbers and what some of the operations with those look like. We have used multiple tools in the classroom to help us see how we use decimals and fractions when working with money or recipes when cooking. We have even represented some of those amounts and those operations with math manipulatives that help us figure out what the numbers on a page actually mean or represent in the world. Though decimals and fractions are often some of the trickiest quantities to deal with as early mathematicians, we have daily opportunities to work with them when cooking, at the store, or figuring out allotted time for things (quarter past the hour, half-past the hour, etc.). Some of my greatest learning as a math teacher over the past few weeks have been that the ways that I bring my mathematical thinking to the surface of my talk throughout the day, in every subject area or unit of study, can change the way our kids see math. Talking through these ways you use math, especially when dealing with fractions and decimals, can support continued mathematical thinking and expansion for our students!
Learning to Come:
American Revolution & Creating the US Government
As we work our way through the book Chains, and we continue our study of US history, we will be digging deeply into the American Revolution. We will continue to study these events with a foundation of valuing different perspectives. Upon coming back from break, we will be working on some biographical expert projects of some of the early United States' historical figures. I will be working hard to find representative historical figures for us to choose from for this research from different backgrounds alongside our traditionally mentioned founding fathers. If over break, you and your family find an historical figure (from the time of the American Revolution or the beginning of our country's government) you would like for your child to study, please keep that person in mind and we will begin thinking about that research in January.
Light & Energy
We will also begin studying light and energy after break. We have learned a little about how light operates in space and how important it is to us as astronomers. However, we will be working toward understanding properties of light and other forms of energy. This should be a very interesting unit as we will get to experiment and investigate the ways that we experience types of energy in our world.
