Welcome and welcome back to school, Cerrito Creek! This year we’ve hit the ground running with community building, investigations, and collaborative work all around. Browse through the photos to get a peek into Cerrito Creek in action, with some Strawberry Creek 5th graders sprinkled in for good measure!
MATH
5th grade mathers began the year diving into volume, constructing 3D boxes with Omnifix cubes. The challenge: how many different boxes can be made with a volume of 24 cubes? Once they were satisfied they’d found all the different boxes, partnerships made posters to present their findings and demonstrate their learnings.
5th graders also practice collaboration and communication of mathematical thinking with visual modeling while solving challenge problems.
4th grade mathers finished our unit on multiplication strategies and now we’re deepening those strategies by using the array model. Array models allow the visualization of problems. We are now extending the array model for use with multiple digits, as it helps them decompose them for ease in multiplication. This is a support in moving students from additive reasoning to multiplicative reasoning (moving away from repeated addition, more specifically, and towards more efficient approaches).
SCIENCE
Science launched with an investigation into electricity with the challenge, “Can you find 4 different ways to light a bulb with only 1 wire, 1 battery, and 1 lightbulb?” Building on their piqued curiosity, students learned to build circuits to run lightbulbs and motors, test conductivity, and troubleshoot non-working circuits. Next we are currently (get it?🤭) working on effective ways of chaining multiple loads together and the polarity of our power sources. Our culminating project will be to build a working gadget that does…something! Stay tuned!
CULTURAL STUDIES
Cultural Studies this year focuses on US history and geography. First order of business is always an investigation of how to use a map so we can orient ourselves in the world, complete with a look into why all flat maps are incorrect, how maps help perpetuate racist biases towards white and western nations, and how to read latitude and longitude. Students practiced making plane table maps, which is harder than it sounds, and have moved on to our first big project – a US state research project and map creation. Students have also been eagerly searching through their coin stashes on the look-out for the 50 state quarters in the original 1999-2008 minting. Each morning, students share out what they have gleaned about the state on any quarter they’ve found, including important symbology, the date of minting, and the date of statehood, before adding it to our class collection map. So far we’re up to 28/50!
LITERACY
Students have been reading up a storm, urged on by a recently reorganized library, 30-book challenge scratchers, and our first read-aloud celebrating the freedom to read whatever you choose! A timely investigation into book banning during Banned Books Week was illuminating and Lola brought in cool new posters so we can easily share where we stand on the subject!
An upcoming writing project will weave together our work on character traits and development and story plot arcs, and feature original characters of students’ own creation with whom they will share some aspect of their identity.
COMMUNITY
We’ve been so lucky to have an abundance of occasions to celebrate and we’re only two months in! Between birthdays, holidays, Talent Fridays, Buddy Time, and now field trips, students have had much opportunity to share hobbies, teach new skills, learn from one another and celebrate each other. There’s also been some good old fashioned fun on the yard too. Check out these sweet moments captured below.
Birthdays celebrated so far – Charlotte, Alia, Julian. And don’t worry, if your kid had a birthday before school began, we get to celebrate on their half birthday!
Talent Friday – Charlotte taught pretzel making, Emmalea led us in origami boxes, Lola led sketching, Rowan taught us to make friendship bracelets, and Cedar taught us cordage!
7th Grade Buddies, Rented Runway, & Halloween
This year we are buddies with the 7th grade and joined them for a get-to-know-you activity on Friday followed by Recycled Runway on Monday. Check out Chris’s Recycled Runway Album here. Halloween was a hit, and Cerrito celebrated with Halloween themed math challenges, Spooky writing between the lines, and catapult construction for chucking some mini mallow pumpkins across the yard. Click here to see all of Chris’ Halloween Album.
Just some good ol’ fashioned fun
