Snow and new units!

Hey, I hope all of you are enjoying the snow!  I am really excited about it.  Throughout the winter I will continue to assign kids 20 minutes of outside fun for homework, so please encourage them to explore the winter landscape.

We are wrapping up our unit on squishy circuits.  We are publishing some accordion books to show our understanding.  These will be displayed outside our classroom, so the next time you are here, check them out!  As this unit wraps up we are moving into some new ones.

In writing we are beginning to explore informational text.  We are currently doing this by reading about and taking notes regarding some of Vermont's history.  This reading and unit will concentrate on pulling information from sources, citing sources, and creating pieces of writing about Vermont's history.

We are also beginning and investigation of landforms.  This investigation will focus on online research, source citation, paraphrasing, and of course landforms.  We will be looking at several examples of different types of landforms, and finding examples that exist in Vermont!

I hope this post finds you well, and that you are prepping for a rejuvenating Thanksgiving break.

Dave

This is the week of beginnings!

All beginnings, mean of course, some endings.  This week we have been wrapping up a few units from the fall, and launching into some new one for the coming months.  We are wrapping up our unit on narrative writing, all students have increased their story-tellers voice and added to the skills that they have in narrative writing.  Moving forward in writing we will be working on creating pieces of non-fiction writing.  For this work we will be focusing on the changes Vermont has gone through during it's history.  We will also be working on the skills involved with performing research, paraphrasing and citing sources.

We are also beginning some new work in math.  We are currently tackling two parallel strains of math concepts.  We are working to develop our mastery of foundational facts, and working to applying these to "multiplication problems." Your students can clarify these terms for you if need be!
Another unit we are putting the finishing touches on is "squishy circuits." During this unit we investigated electricity and circuits, created some fantastic models, and are culminating with some beautiful books.  After this unit we will be working with some we-do Lego robots and creating programs to these robots so they can perform different tasks, as well as modifying programs to modify the actions of the robots.

Finally, it was so nice to meet with many of you over the past two weeks.  If you have any further questions please contact me so we can set up a follow up meeting, or if anything arises in the future, please check in and we can have a quick chat!

-Dave