This Week on the Starship...

In science, we learned about some of the different science tools we'll be using this year. Now that we're familiar with them and their purposes, we're ready for next week's hands-on experiments!

Social studies has been filled with lessons on community roles and responsibilities, how we learn about the past (ask a fourth grader about "talking trash"), and how communities have many people who help us meet our needs. A few of us even got to interview some of our Kiker community members like Nurse Tarren and Mrs. Crowther.

We also talked about turning September 11th--a day when some Americans were not treated with kindness, dignity, and respect--into a day of spreading kindness ourselves. We talked about how in the midst of an event like 9/11 that has unthinkable injustice, there is also an overwhelming amount of compassion and kindness. And that we can be a part of that positivity.

Our Mission IMPOSSIBLE continued this week...our challenges ranged from the wacky (our shoes scattered about and only our teammates could touch them)...

to rewarding (hard work to unravel well packed fruit snacks)!

In math, our focus was place value and number sense. We are going to start some great math based projects next week.

In language arts we began our journeys as writers. We talked about the power of craft, having the ability to choose each and every word! We wrote "tiny books" and also letter writing.

In reading, we focused on catching ourselves when we are confused and using fix up strategies to get at meaning. We discovered there's a lot of detective work in using context clues and in symbolism as well. We wrote our first summary and learned about the art of "straining" out details to get at main ideas.

We enjoyed our first Breakfast and the Paper -- great nonfiction reading with a favorite morning treat!