Hello Families,
November was an eventful month. We had special guest artisan, Jesus Sosa visit and show his art of creating alebrijes. We started a thinking about multiplication as repeated addition, “loops and groups”, and skip counting. We also learned more about how the Ohlone people used acorns to make their staple acorn flat bread or acorn mush. We are growing in our cursive skills, we celebrated a birthday, and we welcomed Very Important People into our classroom before the Fall Break!
Jesus Sosa visited us from Oaxaca for his 13th year! He demonstrated his woodworking craft and carved out an alabrije as we looked on. We also got to take part in painting part of an alabrije that you can find in the Spanish room.
Multiplication is an aspect of math that all third graders seem to look forward to learning. We first introduce multiplication as a more efficient way of repeated addition. There are different models to think about repeated addition and multiplication. We looked at sheets of stamps. Each sheet was a in the form of a square or rectangle. We then took the step further and thought about how much money each sheet of stamps might be. This went beyond just counting how many stamps there are, and pushed the Temescalians to start skip counting to figure out the cost of the sheet of stamps.
We also used the idea of a seascape where we were give the length of one creature, Chloe the Clownfish. If Chloe was 4 inches long, how long/wide would other creatures in a seascape be? If the sea turtle was the length of 5 Chloes, then the length of the sea turtle would be 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 20 inches or 5 x 4 = 20 inches.
We also used cube trains that were organized by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, and 10s. If you come into the classroom, you can see the resulting number lines posted on the windows above the sink. Temescalians started noticing connections between the 2s, 4s, 8s. “All of the numbers on the 4s paper are also on the 2s paper. But there is more space in between each number on the 4s paper than on the 2s line.” “The 8s are the doubles of the 4s.” “All of them are even.”
Temescalians also have a packet of 100s charts in class where they need to color the multiples of a given number for each page. Hopefully, they’ll start to see patterns and begin to familiarize and eventually memorize their multiplication facts.
If you’d like to play a game to practice skip counting, click on this link to play “Loops and Groups” online: https://student-activities.mathlearningcenter.org/?902daf68
Learning more about the Ohlone people, we worked together to make a map of the area that the Ohlone people used to occupy. Their territory stretched from Marin to Monterey Bay. There were many other people groups in the area who lived similarly, but because of available natural resources, there might have been a greater emphasis on one type of hunting/gathering than another. The Ohlone people that we study lived where Berkeley is now, so they relied on the bounty of seafood that the Bay offered whereas the people groups that might live closer to Mount Diablo may depend on hunting because they had more access to obsidian that they would use to fashion arrowheads.
Thinking of food, we took a closer look at how the local people would prepare acorns to make flat bread or acorn mush. Both were a staple of their diets.
This video is a demonstration by a woman from an area in Southern California, but the practices are similar to those used in the Bay Area. (Please note that the language that she uses is different from that of the Ohlone people in this area.)
We also showed this video from the 1930s and noted the language that was used and how that might affect how one would interpret what we were seeing. This silent film had language like “crude experimenting” “primitive way” and we talked about how words matter. In our conversation, we noted how sophisticated and creative the techniques used were to prepare the acorns and heat water.
Finally, here is another video that features making acorn mush using tightly woven baskets, and hot rocks.
Temescalians teamed up to make their own posters of the steps to make acorn mush/bread.
In our cursive letters, we have learned all the letters that start with an undercurve and have now progressed to the letters that start with a downcurve. The connections that lead into these letters are especially challenging to remember to retrace before forming the letter. If you’re helping your Temescalian with their cursive practice at home, please remind them about the connection and they need to form a “c” first before continuing on and forming the letter. Another way to practice cursive, in addition to sky writing and the workbook practice, is to do what I call “backboard writing” where I write a word with letters that we have learned, and they take turns writing on a partner’s back or guess what the word is. I often tell the kids who are the “backboards” and receiving the word how many letters are in the word. Before revealing the word, I also like to check in and ask how many letters reached the sky/worm lines… what was the vowel(s) in the word… was the featured letter at the beginning/middle/end of the word?
As we continue working on our thankfulness writing, we have also been honing our editing skills. We have made corrections to the morning message and self edit and peer edit our writing pieces.
We celebrated a birthday and learned more about a fellow Temescalian! This Temescalian enjoys going on many adventures with their grownups, including going skiing and rock climbing!
It was so nice to meet so many important people in our Temescalians’ lives. We had a slideshow of classroom moments showing while Temescalians read with their grownups, made “leaves of gratitude”, notan leaf art, and played math games together.
The last weeks before the Winter Break are going to be busy, and we invite families to join us on Friday, December 16 from 8:30 – 9:30am for a breakfast potluck. Look out for an email from the classroom coordinators, but the link to the potluck signup is also here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17F6BhT0OkGd6VpdU9xOvAmX3Ks3fiVYstVoGXsqJ_ko/edit?usp=sharing
One more request is for any clean clear 32 oz. soup containers with lids that you might have at home. (An example here: https://www.amazon.com/YW-YSD-2532-12-Plastic-Soup-Container/dp/B06Y6JWQTD/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=plastic%2Bsoup%2Bcontainers%2Bwith%2Blids&qid=1670186418&sr=8-12&th=1 )
I have some, but more are always welcome! Please send them in by Wednesday, 12/14 so we can use them for a science experiment on Thursday!
Upcoming Events:
December
2: Report Writing Day (no school, no childcare)
9: Assembly
16: Family Reading Friday (8:30 – 9:00am in Temescal Creek)
19 – Jan 3: Winter Break
January
4: School starts again
16: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (no school/no childcare)