3rd Grade
This year, third grade is working on building team strategies through STEM challenges on a weekly basis. STEM challenges are an interactive way to work within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics all in one activity. These activities help to develop strong team working skills both in and outside of the classroom. Along with this, they help to build on problem solving strategies that students are able to take and apply to independent work. One of our first challenges of the year was a Breakout Box activity. The groups had to work together to solve clues based on school related topics to break out of their box.
4th Grade
In fourth grade we are currently working on place value and rounding multi digit numbers. This will help students as the year progresses onto more difficult work involving multiplication and division.
ELA – So far this year, we have gone over different types of genre, story elements, and will begin visualizing soon. These aspects of literacy will allow students to better understand texts and immerse themselves within stories – thus building a love of reading.
SS – We are currently working on mapping skills and will begin a mapping project in the coming days! Students have observed and taken note of four different types of maps; physical, political, climate, and resource. Students are going to be making up their own island and create these four types of maps for their own imaginary land.
5th Grade
It’s been a whirlwind start for 5th Grade! In math, we are learning about place-value through the thousandths and addition and subtraction of decimals. For reading and language arts, we completed our mini-unit on figurative language and have started our lessons on main-idea and supporting details. We are working hard on understanding the differences between topic and main idea. For social studies, we have finished our short geography unit and have entered the world of ancient Mesopotamia, where the kids are learning about how civilization grew from early hunter-gatherer societies into powerful empires.
Music Notes
2nd graders worked on rhythm and musical form by playing a hand game to the game from Mexico entitled, “Bate, Bate.” Students created their own 8-beat pattern for the first section of the music, then performed a common pattern for the the other two sections of the song.