Spring!

Welcome back! We hope all had a wonderful week off. We are so glad to be together as a learning community again!

Third Grade visited the Capitol on Monday. We saw many neat exhibits and saw first hand where lawmakers work here in Austin. Our historians saw primary sources that we've studied...it's exciting to recognize the painting of Santa Anna's surrender as soon as we walked through the south doors!

In ELA and reading, we are working on some test preparation skills. It looks different than our every day notebook work, so Mrs. Forrest is taking some time to have us practice those discreet test taking skills. We continue to read Malala's story, and we are captivated by her bravery.

SBLC mathematicians started the week giving and receiving feedback on our data representations. We are working to understand how clear labels, titles, and even the type of graph all affect how our audience understand the data. Based on feedback, students revised to improve the clarify of their work. We've also been solving an interesting perimeter puzzle that embeds all of our math process skills and helps us ground our perimeter work in a real-life context. It's exciting to see how persistent we've become with the organization, clear visual communication, and collaboration required to solve open-ended puzzles!

As scientists, we are noticing the differences between living and nonliving matter. We developed a list of 6 characteristics that describes all living organisms and then compared our list with the general biological community.  We'll consider next week how living and nonliving elements interact in the world around us.

Enjoy the weekend!
Jen and Jewellyn