Cerrito Creek had a super productive week—setting SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely), learning new geographical concepts, setting up new classroom technologies, and attempting to untie themselves from a mass of fingers and wrists as a team-building. Also, for Talent Friday this week, Hailey performed a song on her recorder! We look forward to more students sharing with us on Talent Friday and hope that each student will sign up at least once this year.

Human knot!
One group attempts to untangle themselves.
Hailey performs for Talent Friday.

Cultural Studies

This week in Cultural Studies, students learned about tectonic plates, including the 3 type of plate boundaries (convergent, transform, and divergent), and the specific type of boundaries that make up our beautiful, earthquake-prone state of California. Through the use of BrainPop videos and PBS LearningMedia including interactive flash maps, students got to explore and better understand the physical makeup of our world. We also practiced using Google Classroom for the first time to access these various resources.

Students brainstorm vocabulary and concepts on a draft poster.
Emme looks through PBS Learning resources.

Reader’s Workshop

Cerrito students continued our reading of Island of Blue Dolphins this week, with a focus on figurative language. We explored the use of metaphors and similes as a form of comparison, including a hunt for the literary devices in the book. Students also moved on from Round Robbin reading to partner-reading this week, giving kids an opportunity to read with someone they might not normally sit down to read with.

Carson and Grace partner read.
Noa and Marian read outside.
Yoshi and Sophie partner read in the Peace Corner.

Writer’s Workshop

This week in Writer’s, students continued working on their memoirs. Some children kept drafting in their notebooks, others began the revision processing using 2 different editing checklists and having peers review their work, and others started typing up their drafts. We introduced Google Classroom as a tool for writing, so the students who have completed their editing and revision processes on paper started typing up their stories using Google Docs.

Callan and Rory peer edit.
Noa and Charlie work on their writing.
Sophie finishes up her revisions.

5th Grade Math

5th graders continued their work with multiplication and factors this week, returning to the context of Brad and his baseballs. We talked about pricing baseballs and practiced the multiplication “over” strategy. We also did stations with students; they completed an assessment, worked together on a practice sheet, used Dreambox, and previewed our next unit with Sarah.

Golden Gate Bridge group works on Dreambox.
Sarah works with the Bay Bridge group in Number Corner.

4th Grade Math

This week the fourth graders expanded on their understandings of factors and multiples. We played relays with multiple wheels to strengthen multiplication fact fluency, started new lessons on Dreambox, and learned how to calculate multiplicative comparisons such as, “The giant is three times taller than Jim.”

Kian and Callan work on multiplicative comparisons.
Sam points at a giant.

Science

Our scientists reviewed the practices of scientists and engineers and noticed they are very similar! Then they needed to put their problem solving, designing, and investigating skills to the test. Using what they’ve learned about the physical properties of the different materials and processes of separating mixtures and solutions, they sketched and built a system to design a way to filter a dry mixture of kosher salt, diatomaceous earth, gravel, and a mystery material. Next week they will continue with testing their constructions.

The Blue Table sets up their experiment.
Red Taco Shells table tries to filter out their mix.
Noa and Grace observe the magnetic properties of gravel.

Additional Announcements

  • Parent-teacher conferences are Thursday and Friday of next week, Oct. 10 and 11. We look forward to meeting with each of you and talking about your child!
  • Thursday, Oct. 24, Cerrito and Strawberry are headed to OMCA for a Día de los Muertos field trip with Erica. We will leave school at 8:30 AM and return at 1.
  • Scholastic Book Club- Thank you to those that placed book orders last month. We are off to a good start in collecting credits towards books for our classroom library! If you ordered for September, your order has been placed and should be here in 7-10 business days. While you wait, check out this months’ offerings from Scholastic. Linked here are the 4th grade and 5th grade flyers. The teachers have gone through and made some suggestions for student (and teacher) favorites and when you browse online, you have access to all the different catalogs from grade levels, so younger and older readers aren’t left out! Please use this link to access the website, and use class code W6RVJ when signing up your child to connect to Teacher Samantha Snook. Happy shopping!
  • Yom Kippur is observed Tuesday, Oct. 8 through Wednesday, Oct. 9.