Announcements and Upcoming Dates!
Tuesday, Nov. 19, 9:30-3:00 – Cerritoberry field trip to Precita Eyes – We will be doing a mural tour through Precita Eyes. Students will need a lunch, water, and appropriate layers.
Thursday, Nov. 21, 12:00-1:00 – Cerritoberry Feast – The feast is an opportunity to come together, break bread, and for your children to demonstrate their gratitude for their families by serving you all a meal. It will be Stone Soup style, with each student and their family contributing an ingredient to be prepared and cooked by the students. Check your emails and ask your children about what they have signed up to contribute. Don’t forget to RSVP with an approximate head count!
Friday, Nov. 22, 8:45-11:30 – Grandfriends Day – Families and Grandfriends, join us for a morning of music and revelry, put on for you by your very own Cerrito Creek students!
Tuesday, Nov. 26 – Scholastic Book Club order deadline – Please submit your Scholastic book orders online by Nov. 26. I will then submit them altogether for the most rewards on class orders. Use class code W6RVJ. Thank you to those who have ordered, we have earned 6 new books so far because of you! Don’t forget, books make wonderful holiday gifts!
This week in Cerrito…
Cultural Studies
After completing our maps last week, students had the chance to do a gallery walk of one another’s posters. Using post-its, we left feedback, and then took some time to made a few adjustments based on the feedback we received. Later that week, Cerrito started our new Cultural Studies unit, which is the study of Indigenous tribes of California. In order to launch into this study, we created a timeline going back roughly 17 thousand years. This allowed us to have a visual representation of how long Indigenous Americans were here before white European colonizers even spotted what we now call the Americas. We talked about the Bering Land Bridge and also watched a Teen Vogue-produced video on Native American stereotypes. We created a new KWL chart and will continue to add to is as we dive into this unit.
Writer’s Workshop
This week Cerrito started working on their final project of this writing unit—creating graphic novels of Indigenous folk tales. On Tuesday, students worked in partners to read picture books of Native folktales, and later in the week they listened to online resources of different CA tribes, and then created a story arc of two different stories using these resources. Next weeks kids will pick one of the stories they story arc’d to create a graphic novel adaptation.
Reader’s Workshop
Whew! Cerrito Creek finished their first whole class novel this week, Island of the Blue Dolphins. Because we all read the same book together, for our final project, students have been given the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the story in one of a variety of ways. Students picked from ‘Make Something’, ‘Write Something’, and ‘Reenact Something’ and spent the week determining what they would make, write, or reenact, how that would demonstrate their understanding of character development, and how they would incorporate evidence from the book to support their inferences. To organize their plans, students created a Google Slides presentation with their project proposals, a few sentences on why they chose it, a materials list, a projection of three iterations of their project, and a 2 week day-by-day plan for accomplishing tasks towards their completed project. A 3D model of the island, graphic novel, card and board games, and a book review essay are just a few of the projects we have to look forward to. Ask your student about their plan!
5th Grade Math
In math this week, 5th graders launched into a new unit of fractions. While fractions may seem intimidating, Bridges makes it approachable! We used money and clock models to practice visualizing fractions, which also helped with adding and subtracting. We learned a new fractions games, worked on problem strings, and worked on story problems.
4th Grade Math
We rode the wave of Math Night excitement right into division! We started by evaluating a story problem to see what strategies from multiplication students naturally applied to division, including drawing out the problem, fair dealing, and skip counting. From there we had good discussions about what to do when an amount can’t divide evenly. What to do with those pesky remainders-do you split them up? Leave them out? Fraction or decimal? Carefully attending to the context of a story problem is the key to determining what makes sense for remainders. In how many ways are you and your children utilizing division in your everyday lives without even realizing it? Point it out to them!
Science
Our scientists are making big gains towards completing their Element posters. After researching in books and various websites, students made advertisement posters for their element making sure to include basic information such as the atomic number, symbol, and structure, as well as physical and chemical properties, where it’s found in nature and used by humans. Students found out interesting facts about their elements that were new to all of us, including what pure sulfur ACTUALLY smells like!
Happy Birthday, Scorpios!
We had a double birthday week with Emme’s grandparents joining us from Canada, and pictures of Rachel’s childhood pets!
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