As we wrap up 2024, here are some highlights from Cerrito Creek class.

Cultural Studies

Cerrito students completed their biggest fall project were able to show them off at November’s VIP Day. We would love for you to take a look too! Following their investigations into the US states, regions, and Indigenous cultural regions, Cerritans each picked a US state to study in-depth and create a map for. They used resources such as National Geographic Kids, Ducksters, Native-Land.ca, census.gov, and good old-fashioned encyclopedias and books, to help them identify important cities, geographical features, highways, landmarks, basic facts, symbols, and points of interest to represent their to-scale map reproductions. Students then created an additional clear overlay to represent the territories of the Indigenous groups that were and are present in each state. Please use this album link to browse through the photos that include the Indigenous territories (pic 1) and the paper map with everything else (2), as well as see the accompanying display information. These maps represent a huge effort for our 4th and 5th graders and will remain in the classroom throughout the year for us to refer back to as we move through the rest of our Cultural Studies units. Next, students will begin to answer the question, “Why do people move?” with and interview, vocabulary deep dive, and a look at the first large wave of permanent white settlers to the Americas at Jamestown.

   

In other subjects…

Cerritan readers have set reading goals for the rest of 2024, with a challenge of reading 30 books by the end of the school year. While some students will stretch themselves in scope, others will be taking on more complex subjects or trying out new genres. In writing, we plotted out the elements of our shared class reading book, Ban this Book, on a story map, and did deeper dives into each element of a story arc. We then looked at the different types of conflict (internal such as person vs. self and external, such as person versus person, nature, and society). We’ve been brainstorming a variety of characters to warm up for the bigger project of writing a realistic fiction story.  These are the prewriting stages and will be followed by the full writing process of drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.  Morphology continues, reviewing the 19 morphemes we’ve studied deeply so far, and this week, getting our first look at Greek bases. Ask your student to explain to you what makes a Greek base different from a Latin one!

     

Math

In 4th grade math, we finished our unit on arrays for multiplication.  We continued to review our strategies for multi-digit multiplication by shifting our focus to using ratio tables, with the emphasis of looking at landmark numbers, 10, 20, and 30 to self-correct and improve number sense. We’re also looking at pentominoes, shapes with five squares that make different polygons, looking for patterns and examining symmetry and congruency, fourth graders are trying to make all the different possible pentominoes, determining which are the same and which are reflected.  We play multiplication and division games after that to reinforce math skills.

5th graders have been steadily working on fractions using a variety of tools and models – Cuisenaire rods that require students to first define the whole, tiles for finding fractions of a set, clock and money models to reference benchmark fractions, and continued use of ratio tables to help find equivalent fractions. Next, they’ve applied their new strategies to different shopping scenarios to answer the question, “Which is the better buy?” Just in time for gift-giving season! Check out these posters students made mapping a river trail and all the landmarks they needed to plot with only the given fractions to work from.

VIP Day in Pictures

Thank you to all that came out to support our Cerritans at last month’s VIP day. I hope you felt very important, I know our students did! Here’s a few snap shots of the event.