Learning & Loving It!

We're halfway through April but ALL the way into learning! 

Science & Social Studies

We completed our space unit this week. We continued our understanding of Earth's movements and patterns. Sophia explained, "We were able to identify sky patterns like seasons, day and night, and years. These patterns happen because the earth revolves and rotates."

We also studied the moon's patterns. Second graders learned about the appearance of the moon. Kate said, "I discovered that the moon is waxing when it gets bigger and waning when it gets smaller." Third graders deepened their understanding of the moon's phases and cycle. "I learned that we always see the same side of the moon because of how fast the moon rotates," Ronak explained. Fourth graders made the connection between the moon and our oceans. Dylan reflected, "I learned that the Earth bulges as the sides from the moon and sun’s gravity, creating high and low tides.

With so many questions about space, we took advantage of our access to technology with some Google Time. Ryan said, "I’m grateful for search engines. Today I learned Google knows a lot of stuff!"

Some other space trivia? Lola learned "that the sun is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit." Wow!

This week during recess, we spotted our Texas State Bird! A lovely mockingbird song rang out from the very top of that tree! 

In reading, our novels have been teaching us all kinds of things about history! In Fourth, we finished Someone Named Eva, and, as Nora realized, the book revealed much more about a village of people than we realized. "I learned that Hitler completely destroyed Lidice, a town in Czecholslovakia because he wanted revenge for an attack on one of his important soldiers." We had been so focused on our main character and her struggle throughout the novel, however, in the Author's Note, we found the author wanted to make sure that Lidice itself was never forgotten. Powerful! It has been such a moving experience together that Jillian found extra questions to pursue in her Blast Off notebook.

Third grade is intently reading Out of the Dust, and has been amazed that, as Taylor said, "The dust could be like snow." We have discovered the trials of living in a harsh environment where your whole life revolved/depended on nature.

Second has been exploring a new novel, but also took time to develop a rubric together for our 3,2,1 and ROW. All grade levels contributed, but this was 2nd's first time. Larkin pointed out, "A rubric is something that contains what's expected." It makes things extremely clear, and helps students know what they are doing and what areas can be improved.

As a reminder, 3rd and 4th will be taking STAAR Math (Tuesday) and Reading (Wednesday). Please have them get a good night's sleep, a good breakfast, and here to school on time.

Math

This week 4th graders learned about elapsed time, frequency tables, and dot plots. Fourth graders also measured and converted units during project block. A quote from Evangeline was, "I learned that 10 decimeters make a meter."

Our 3rd graders learned about frequency tables, pictographs, dot plots, and bar graphs.  Sydney Crowe said she "learned how to look at data and tun it into a pictograph."  Second graders had fun measuring in inches and feet.  Juyeop loves measuring and he said, "I learned what a meter stick is and that it has 39 inches and 100 centimeters on it."

Happy Weekend!
Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Forrest, & Ms. Reiman