Halloween week is always a very special week in school communities. Anticipation and excitement builds as the 31st approaches; chaos ensues on Halloween day; and students generally show up mellow and recovering from their sugar surges by November 1st. Students agreed that a Friday highlight was seeing Sophie play her saxophone for us. Read on to find out how we spent this unique week in Cerrito:

Noah, Kian and Yoshi read their spooky story to the class.
5th graders graph candy.
Cerrito students check out an electricity station in the haunted lab.
Marian and Callan make a catapult to chuck candy.
Sophie playing sax for us.

Cultural Studies

Students continued to work on their California maps this week; we’re looking to wrap up our projects next week. Cerrito Creek has been listening to different artists with that “California sound” while working, including the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas.

Charlie works on his map.
Jaeda researches for her map.

Writer’s Workshop

Now that memoirs are completely wrapped up, we launched our new Writer’s unit—Native American folk tales in Cerrito Creek. This week we focused on the practice of oral history, with students hearing Native American legends, telling their own stories, clarifying the difference between myths, legends, fables and folktales, and learning about the practice of oral story-telling. We used TedXTalks, PBS Learning Media, and written accounts to support our study. On Halloween we co-authored spooky stories based on the “Vindow Viper” story.

The red table reflects on what is a story and what makes a good story.
Jackson and Marian tell each other stories.
Vivian and Katherine team up to tell one another stories.
Tess and Jaeda read their spooky story to the class.

Reader’s Workshop

This week we are moving full speed ahead with Island of the Blue Dolphins, averaging 2 chapters each day! Karana has been alone on the island for a while now, and Cerrito students spent the week exploring the natural resources that were available to her and how it impacted her survival. Students used primary source documents including maps and expert interviews to investigate the native plants and animals on San Nicholas Island. Students also practiced how to write a summary using the framework, “Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then”. Summarizing is an important skill that students will be developing all year long.

Noah and Vivian catch up on Island.
The Green table practices summarizing chapter 4.
Tess and Kian work at their table to summarize.

5th Grade Math

This week in math, 5th graders practiced using base-10 tiles to explore division—both with and without remainders. We wrote our own story problems, and focused on the context of a problem when dealing with a remainder. Students took a post-assessment on division and then did some fun Halloween-themed math with coordinate planes and candy graphing on Thursday and Friday. Students will start making games next week for Math Night next week.

Yoshi and Noah write story problems together and solve.
Noa, Abby and Max work together.
Carson, Tess and Amelia solve with the base 10 tiles.
Emme, Mirella, Noa, Marian and Lily graph their candy the day after Halloween.

4th Grade Math

4th grade mathematicians are moving forward with 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication with an emphasis on multiplying by 10 and multiples of 10. In pairs, students worked on creating long ratio tables with multiples of challenging numbers like 18, 35, and 68. We looked for patterns in the multiples and used them to help us predict what the x10, x20, and x30 benchmarks would look like. We also played rounding games that got students giving each other challenging multi-digit numbers to round to the nearest 10s, 1000s and even 10,000s! Come to Math Night to try out some games with us and see what they’re all about!

Callan, Jaeda, and Jackson work together to find multiples of 35.
Rui and Vaughan pushed through to find the multiples of 65 to complete their ratio table.

Science

Students continued their individual element projects this week by doing more research. We read texts and used online sources to help fill in a packet of needed information. With the help of BrainPop, we learned how to calculate the number of neutrons an element has, as well as what its crystal structure and atomic structure are. On Halloween, we did an engineering experiment that required students to make catapults using popsicle sticks and rubber bands and launch candy eyeballs across the room. We also got to visit the haunted 8th grade science lab!

Charlie, Grace and Jaeda research their elements.
Students review the Brainpop video on the Periodic Table.
Vivian and Sophie build their catapult.
Carson launches a candy using his catapult.
Rachel measures the distance of Kian and Yoshi’s launch.
Yoshi and Tess make a new cockroach friends in the Middle School lab.

Additional Announcements

  • Thursday, November 7th – Math Night; 6pm-7:30pm- Curious what and how your child is learning math this year? Come to Math Night, where you will be led through games and investigations by your young mathematician.
  • Wednesday, November 13th — Makeup Photos Day 
  • Thursday, November 14th- Fort Ross parent volunteer training; 6pm-7pm — All parents who have signed up to be a chaperone/”officer” for the Ft. Ross trip are required to attend this training to get a better understanding of what the expectations and requirements are for our trip.