The second week of school has really helped us settle into our routine and schedules. Perhaps most excitingly, we’ve gotten to spend time with some of the Core Arts teachers, including Erica in Spanish, Craig in P.E., Owen in Music, and Stephen in his new push-in class, Health. (We look forward to Art with Julianne next Monday!) We also got to have our first Park recess!
Cultural Studies
This week in Cultural Studies, Cerrito Creek created “Grow Your Garden” art pieces, which gave us an opportunity to reflect on ourselves as learners, our community as supports, our aspirations in and out of school, and so much more! While following a specific format, but of course adding their own individual twists, students created their own “gardens,” which included:
- A flower with their name at the center and 6-8 petals with elements of their identity (our identity work from last week helped a lot with this!)
- A stem decorated with 4 petals featuring the names of people who support them
- Under the ground, 5-10 roots that included activities that ground them
- 4 weeds that list challenges they face
- A sun that names a an aspect of their personality that they are proud of
- A butterfly or other flying thing that features 4 goals: an academic goal, an at-home goal, a social goal, and a personal goal
Reader’s Workshop
We did a lot of foundational work in Reader’s Workshop this week—starting a study of genre, learning expectations around SSR, and demonstrating book-talk skills!
Students came into Reader’s Workshop with their completed Goodreads art pieces featuring 3 books they’ve read and enjoyed, and 5 books they’d like to read, which perfectly launched us into our study of genre and reading preferences. After completing a survey for homework on what types of books they like to read, Cerrito Creek played a game of “Just Like Me” where we shared out what types of books we are most drawn to. Afterwards, we did some open brainstorming on 4 different genres: historical fiction, realistic fiction, science fiction and fantasy, which we will continue to work with next week.
The class also went over expectations for SSR—Sustained Silent Reading—and got a good amount of reading in, both silent and aloud, including with our buddies in Blackberry! At the end of the week, Cerrito joined forces with Strawberry to model book talks in a “fishbowl.” In these discussions, fifth graders broke into 3 groups to discuss the 3 summer reading books, while 4th graders watched on and commented on their noticings of the discussion.
Writer’s Workshop
4th-5th graders will be starting their first writing unit this month, which we’re really excited about! Because the first unit is “memoir,” we decided to do a quick mini-writing unit on our Name Stories—the story behind our names. Before jumping into the unit, students learned about the importance of knowing someone’s name, pronouncing it correctly, and understanding and respecting the story behind it. After reading the book The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi, students participated in an art exercise in which each student created a name plaque, and then wrote the story of their name. Students also reflected on what they might do if their name is hard to pronounce or is not shown the respect it deserves. Some children didn’t have a specific story about their names, so they either made one up or decided to focus on a middle or last name. On Friday, we got a chance to share our stories with our buddies in Blackberry, and they shared their Heart Maps with us.
5th Grade Math
Through games, worksheets, group discussions and then a formative pre-assessment, students brushed up on multiplication strategies and explored the idea of volume, which will be the theme of our new unit starting next week.
4th Grade Math
We are already well on our way to filling our mathematical toolbox with strategies! With our new math notebooks we looked for patterns in the Ancient Egyptian number system, set up problem strings and learned how to use a ration table, and engaged in our first mathematical discussions!
Science
This week in Science, we continued to exercise our science brains and skills. We tested our own ability to follow directions through a tricky but engaging paper activity, and the kiddos were super keen to check their families’ ability to follow directions too! (Did you get tested? How did you do?) We also asked ourselves— what does a scientist looks like? Who do we always think of as a scientist? Who doesn’t come to mind? And what scientists have we’ve heard of and know in our personal lives? Students illustrated their ideas of what a scientist looks like, and then shared out with the class while we collected key words such as “chemistry,” “explosion,” “potion,” “observing,” and “taking notes.”
Although not the most thrilling activity in the world, students also set up their Science notebooks, which will help us stay organized as we dive into more hands on activities and explorations. Students learned how to create a Table of Contents, as well as a Index in the backs of their notebooks.
Additional announcements
- Big thanks to Seewan (Jaeda’s mom) and Maya (Marian’s mom) for supporting Cerrito with logistics and planning. Please take the time to read their emails to stay up to date on all sign-ups and parent communication.
- Back to School Night is next week, Sept. 12th from 6-8 PM. We hope to see you then!
- Newsnotes always has pertinent weekly information, so check out for those emails on Thursday.
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