Hello Cerrito Families!
What a pleasure it was to meet, and work with your students this week. They are a great group of kids and I am looking forward to knowing them more! These three days have been packed full of new class systems, games, reflection, and name tags. Students also got a brief introduction to each subject and got to personalize notebooks and cubby tags. Below are a few photos and explanations of some activities we did this week so that you can ask your kid questions and learn a bit yourself.
5th Grade math: Students learned the game “Pico, Ferme, nada” a number guessing game similar to wordle (as a student pointed out). I shared a video from Jo Bowler’s website “youcube” about math mindset to set expectations about how we will approach math this year. Please watch it yourselves, it might make you rethink how you view yourself as a mathematician. The four main messages from the video are,
- Everyone can do math to high levels
- Speed in not important
- Believe in yourself
- Mistakes make your brain grow
4th grade math: Students began with a brainstorm about what they think math includes, when they think math is easy, and when they think it’s hard, normalizing that it is both of those things for everyone at some point. Group work will be big in 4th grade math this year, and they completed a few rounds of their first group challenge, counting from 1-100. It sounds easier than it was and students got to see pictures of themselves engaged in the group work, make observations on what was more or less helpful, and strategize for the next attempt. Ask your mather about this challenge for more details!
Science: Ask your kid about the mystery tubes!
Reading: Students individualized their reader’s notebook by cutting out books they want to read from old Scholastic Book orders.
Writing: We will start writing on Tuesday as students share the stories around their artifact with a partner.
Cultural Studies: Can you locate Mt. Lassen on a map of California? Your students got to see what they know and don’t know about California Geography in a pre-assessment this week.
