What have we been up to?

The Gold Rush Game

For the last few weeks of Cultural Studies, the 4th and 5th graders have been studying the California Gold Rush. We have learned about how it started, why Anglos from the United States came to the new territory of California, the rough conditions they faced to get here, and also the cruel and oppressive treatment of Native Californians by the miners.

In order to “gamify” our learning, Cerrito started playing The Gold Rush Game this week! In this game, students are broken into different mining teams, and aim to collect the most gold—of course! The game switches off between decision making rounds—in which teams must make important choices with unknown consequences (such as deciding how they will travel to CA)—and trivia rounds  in which students must display their understanding of past Gold Rush assignments. We are making ample use of the breaktout rooms on Zoom and so far the kiddos seem to really be enjoying the friendly competition and review of material!

Human Biological Systems

Last week, Cerrito launched our study if human biological systems. Starting with the digestive, students observed different organisms eating and learned about the 2 types of digestions—chemical and physical using a range of resources including BrainPop. Later this week, we turned our attention to the respiratory system. Students experimented with exercise to see how different levels of activity affect our heart rate, and learned how to take our pulse/calculate heart rate.

Poetry

In writing, Cerrito has been studying poetry. Last week, we learned about what poetry is, listened and read some professional poets (Maya Angelou, Jeff McDaniel and Ocean Vuong), explored the use of stanzas and line breaks, and wrote our own free verse poetry. And boy! What a talented and creative class we have! This week, we narrowed our study to haiku poems. We learned the history and origin of these Japanese poems, practiced counting out the syllables, noticing seasonal words used in traditional haiku, and wrote our own 17 syllable poems. We got a chance to share our our writing and even collaboratively wrote an ode to Sam with a 3 haiku verses.

New Math Units

4th graders started a new unit while 5th graders wrapped up theirs in these last couple weeks. 4th graders began exploring geometry by learning about benchmark angles (90 and 180 degrees) and using them to estimate other angles, and also how to use a protractor to be more exact! 5th graders finished Unit 4 and our work on multiplying and dividing whole numbers. They’ve learned a handful of multiplication strategies (area model, partial products, standard algorithm), and become proficient using partial quotients for division. Next week they’ll enter into Unit 5, where we will start learning about multiplying fractions. 5th graders also worked on their first distance learning post-assessment, and both grades learned how to upload a file to an email!

Coming Up!

Readathon

Next week we will be celebrating our annual Readathon remotely! We will play fun books-and-reading-related games during Morning Meeting, and assign a week-long project for kiddos to work on inspired by Reading Rainbow. On Friday, we will also have a 4/5 assembly with author Robert Liu-Trujillo! Time to set aside some books you’ve been aspiring to read because next week you’ll finally have the chance!

Spring Sing Reimagined

While we are all saddened by the cancelation of the shared musical experience that is the Spring Sing, Owen and the 4th and 5th graders have been working diligently on a new musical project. You may have seen your child preparing their contribution, and may have even helped! The final project will be so much more than the sum of its parts, so stay tuned for one of the most collaborative creations of Distance Learning to date!