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Lots of love!

It's been a fun, busy week! We all enjoyed our Valentine's day breakfast and the time spent sharing valentines with each other. Thanks to all who provided food and supplies for our celebration!

We created tessellation coloring pages for our kindergarten buddies last week and had the opportunity to deliver them on Tuesday morning. It was definitely a highlight of the week to teach our buddies the names and attributes of the 2-dimensional shapes we've been studying in class.





In math, we finished our tessellation exploration and reflected on our deeper understanding of 2-D shape attributes. We created small, colorful versions of our favorite tessellations to hang on our classroom ceiling. We spent the second half of the week investigating equilateral triangles and using them to construct polyiamonds. A polyiamond is a shape made by placing equilateral triangles base to base, and we found out that there are many configurations of tetriamonds, pentiamonds, and hexiamonds. We strengthen our mathematical communication skills with every investigation as we learn to better organize our ideas, justify our reasoning, and analyze mathematical relationships along the way.

We learned in science about the ways that water is filtered and how safe drinking water is a scarce resource for many communities around the world. We learned about a few innovative solutions for filtering drinking water in a sustainable way and are making connections to the ways that nature filters water through the environment. 4th grade enjoyed a presentation by Keep Austin Beautiful that helped to prepare us for our upcoming field trip to Slaughter Creek.

We've been Power Revising! We have been learning on how, with one small stroke of the pencil, our readers are affected by our words. Word choice, order, punctuation marks...they all matter! We've explored ways that we as authors can craft -- control -- our pieces with accuracy. It's made an amazing difference in how we are writing already! We've discussed too, how this isn't just a tool at "writing" time. It's essential WHENEVER we write. Please ask your kids to "Power Revise" when you see errors in their writing -- Take Off and Landing, Learning Habits -- they need to be accurate!

We've blended social studies with reading this week as we are learning the cultural/political nature of Pakistan through Malala's eyes. Her words bring her world to us...and have sparked many questions and discussions. I have encouraged them to talk with you  -- there's quite a bit of geopolitical/historical knowledge they want to know. Many of these don't tie directly to Malala's autobiography but they are touched on. They are good questions, and they are tough questions. Thanks for supporting them in growing their awareness and understanding of their world. It's amazing what they want to know.

Enjoy your 3-day weekend!

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