This week as full of learning opportunities inside the classroom, and out!
Math
We continued our study of money, and our group of Temescalians have a strong understanding of how to count up coins, make amounts with the fewest coins, and figure out what coins they would still need.
Sharing different ways to make the same amount of money was a fun way to warm up. Temescalians rose to the challenge of “no repeats” and for $0.79 would say “79 pennies!”, “3 quarters and 4 pennies!”, “7 dimes, 1 nickel, and 4 pennies!”, “7 dimes and 9 pennies!” The possibilities go on!
Next week, we will stretch them a little further and have them work with totaling sums and making change!
Writing
A part of being a third grader is learning the art of writing letters. To practice the format of a letter, we decided to write thank you cards to staff and administration. The Temescalians chose their recipient and tried to count the ways that they were appreciative. The results were fantastic! Each Temescalian took this process seriously and it was heart warming to see the joy the kids had delivering the cards, and the smiles on the recipients’ faces! We were glad they got the chance to practice letter writing!
Reading
Our units are becoming more intertwined and woven together as we embark on our local plants and animals research project. We have talked about the different aspects of a non-fiction text: table of contents, index, glossary, realistic pictures, captions. To now apply this knowledge, we invited Rebecca, the 8th grade humanities teacher, to come in and talk about how a library works. Rebecca recently got a degree in library and information science, and she explained how libraries all over use the Dewey Decimal System to organize their books so that if you know where to look in one library, you know where to look for your book in a different library. We have been coordinating with Rebecca about our research project, and she directed us to the 500s to find books about science. Within that range of numbers, the Dewey call numbers get more specific and you can find books about botany in 580s and zoology in 590s. She also took us on a tour of the TBS library and explained how she hopes to have it organized.
This information came in handy when we went to the Berkeley Public Library – West Branch and looked for books on our topics. The librarian there, Nora, was very helpful and even let us borrow books from the newly acquired Encyclopedia set! It was nice to get out of the classroom and into a different space for learning.
These are the books that we borrowed. They are due on 2/19!
We have yet to start note taking, but we will guide the Temescalians through the process of picking out important information on their plant or animal’s habitat, appearance, what they eat and how they get it, offspring and how they care for their young, and in the case of those studying plants, how seeds are dispersed. We will then use graphic organizers to, well, organize their information so that they can begin drafting. We will do all of this in class so there is no need to worry about helping your Temescalian with writing a research paper at home! We do, however, expect our Temescalians to become experts on their plant/animal!
Birthday Celebrations
We had the luck of having 2 birthday celebrations this week! It is always so much fun to see our Temescalians from birth to today. We have noticed that most Temescalians “do not look like themselves” until a certain age, and this age varies from person to person. We also take joy in appreciating the birthday child and then ask the Temescalian, and his/her panel of experts questions like, “What was your first solid food?” “What was your first sentence?” “What was the scariest thing you’ve ever done?” Our crew of Temescalians come up with some fantastic questions!
Buddies
We got to meet up with our 7th grade buddies this week, and they had a lot of fun playing a game led by Jared called, “Dead Ant”. There are a few “spray cans” who tag children. If you get tagged, you have to lie on your back with all 4 limbs in the air. You can get revived by having 4 friends grab each of your limbs and carry you to “the hospital” and then you get back into the game! While our Temescalians may have been more outwardly excited about the game, everyone had a great time!
Mindfulness
Part of the practice of mindfulness is not just breathing. Noticing is another part of mindfulness. We paired up and took turns noticing things. While one partner was speaking, the other had to “listen like a cow” and have no reaction, but take it all in. Temescalians noticed all sorts of things, “I notice my nose is itchy. I notice the wall behind you is kind of blue right now. I notice that there are other people in the room saying, ‘I notice’ a lot right now.” It was an interesting exercise in focusing our attention on noticing, and practicing what we are doing in our minds as we are breathing.
Reflecting on the experience, one Temescalian shared, “This was a lot like Rocket Write because you just keep talking with out stopping!”
Cursive Handwriting
We are nearing the end of the lower case alphabet! We embarked on learning the lowercase “v” and “x” this week. As we learn more letters, we can spell more and more words!
Part of the practice of cursive writing is practicing on a partner’s back. The teacher writes a combination of letters or a word up and the writer needs to write while the “backboard” needs to guess what is being written. This is a fun activity to do at home with your Temescalian! Be careful of those connections, and don’t forget to cross and dot at the end of each word!
Family Reading Friday
Along with inviting our grown ups into the classroom this morning, we got the chance to meet a Temescalian’s bunnies! These fluffy friends were so sweet! We could have sat there and pet them all day!
Spirit Day: Twin Day
We had a great time twinning today! We had some kids who intentionally tried to dress alike, and others who noticed that they just happened to match other kids!
Other glimpses into our day:
Upcoming Events!
February
2 – Field trip to UC Botanical Garden
6 – Sewing aprons in the classroom! (Bring 1/2 yd of fun quilting cotton or oilcloth! Let us know if you can come in to help and/or you have a sewing machine we could use!)
9 to 13 – Friendship Week (more information to come about this week of being a good friend)
13 – 100th Day of School and Valentine’s Day Celebration
16 to 20 President’s Day Week (no school, childcare provided)
23 – 1,000 Projects due in class! (More info to come!)
25 – Math Night from 6:00 – 8:00pm
