Unity and Leadership

Rowan and Caroline present their project at Kiker morning assembly.

This week we continued our work on our Voice and Choice projects. It's exciting to see the pursuit of understanding important issues, and what we each can do to inspire change. Rowan and Caroline have been learning to put faces to the concern of bullying, and Ms. Fraser invited them to use their information to create a presentation for AISD's Unity Day. They did a fantastic job creating a Google Slide presentation. Their word choices and images kept Kiker's entire student body quiet and listening to what they had to share.

In ELA, we created our very first independent outline for our Expository writing. Our writing community recognized that it was an opportunity to put Say, Mean, Matter into effect, and how easy it was to organize. We've been analyzing compound sentences with multiple predicates and conjunctions. In addition, we are honing our accuracy skills with spelling and complete sentences in all our work. 

In reading, we are nearing the end of our novel, and we have learned so much about theme this week. Discovering through our characters' eyes how when tragic things happen, we can find beauty. Learning that all that truly matters is people. Knowing that the important things are found IN one another.  I am so excited for the depth that these readers have gone, and their maturity has astounded me day after day. Our margin notes are showing more and more thinking -- and going further with our understanding.

In Social Studies, we've learned more about a Native American tribe living in Texas that captured our interest. They are comparing ways of life with other tribes and even our own lives!

As mathematicians, we've studied division in various ways this week.  We've considered multiplication and division relationships, and remembered how useful fact families can be.  We used arrays, equal groups, and number lines as other ways to represent division.  Our fourth graders are exploring how to use partial quotients as a strategy, and have also been practicing their multidigit multiplication strategies.  3rd graders continue to build multiplication fluency using compatible number strategies like using partial products and playing one of their new favorite math games "How Close to 100?"

SBLC scientists continue to learn about forms of energy.  We're reading about simple machines and mechanical energy, and we're more mindful of simple and complex machines that make work easier all around us.  We've also explored sound and light energy this week with stations and lots of multisensory learning opportunities!