Friday, April 29, 2016

Expeditions

Third graders wrapped up unit 5 with an assessment this week.  Students have worked tirelessly on the concepts of area and perimeter and demonstrated great growth.  With the month of April coming to a close, students exhausted the calendar patterns and collected thirds of an hour to add to the growing month’s collection.  Finally, third graders completed a “quick facts” multiplication assessment and practiced their facts with a new multiplication game.
 
Fourth grade mathematicians worked Monday and Tuesday on finishing their “Dream Room” projects.  We used this engaging project as a way to learn more about area, perimeter, and multiplication.  Students have the opportunity to use an online program called Tinkercad to build their rooms in 3D.  Later in the week, students immersed themselves in the language of geometry and consolidated much of what has been studied in the unit so far.  

Grade 3 writing this week has been all about revision and editing.  Students are cleaning up favorite pieces they’ve worked on this year to make them their very best “shot” at each particular genre.  Intensive review of paragraph structure and sentence structure occurred on Wednesday.  

Fourth grade writers drafted and revised realistic fiction pieces.   Students used the four elements of craft from the Narrative Writing Checklist to guide their work.   Most children focused on showing *why* a character did what they did by including character thinking and feeling.   This helped writers compose an ending that showed a shift, or growth, in the main character.   Some are also putting in extra effort to master the punctuation expectation of using commas, capital letters, and quotation marks for dialogue.   Ask your writer about the Narrative Writing Checklist goals she/he set for this unit of study.

All Equinox students were treated to an incredible virtual field trip with Google Expeditions on Wednesday.  Students used Google Cardboard “goggles” outfitted with an Android phone to access an app that simulates guided travel to places around the world.  Teachers were able to act as docents as they guided students on a virtual journey to an amazing place on Earth.

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