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Opportunities!

It doesn't seem possible, but we are down to our last 30 days of school...time flies!

This week, 4th grade had the chance to show the state of Texas how hard they have been working in writing. We are so proud of their effort!

Our supplies for our playground remodel PBL have been arriving all week, and as we have seen them come, our excitement has grown as well! We look forward to making our planning "come to life" as Zane so appropriately said. Hope the rain stays away long enough for us to get a lot done -- we appreciate those of you who have signed up and are willing to come help us with this endeavor!

We actually got started today -- here are a few pictures of the progress!



We've been focusing on discerning Melody's struggle in our novel study. We know that the book is comprised of many little "problems," but we need to find a common theme of those to find her true one struggle in the book. We've developed theories and are watching how text evidence proves or refines those ideas. Our nonfiction analysis continues via articles -- our exciting topic this week was Boogers. Yep, we learned how much snot our bodies make daily and how vital it is to keeping us healthy!

SBLC mathematicians considered the importance of measurement this week, realizing quickly that there are so many connections to this big mathematical topic. We dug in with distance units and tools first, breaking out the rulers and meter sticks. Some of our problem-solving opportunities had us converting between centimeters and millimeters. We know that moving flexibly between units and calculating equivalency will be a big part of our work through various types of measurement. On Thursday we enjoyed a mini-engineering challenge, building and carefully measuring marble tracks. This was a fabulous struggle for all, full of informative mistakes and opportunities to notice our self-talk. SBLC students leaned in to this hard work and valued the design process, even when final outcomes were surprising.



We also put our measurement skills to work during science this week. On Monday we repurposed CD cases into root viewers and germinated radish seeds. We noted observable physical properties as the seed grew and changed through the week. By day 5, many of our roots were 13 or more centimeters long! Since we rotated the root viewers midweek, we also gathered evidence about how roots respond to gravity's pull. We'll draw conclusions based on our results next week, but for now we added our radish sprouts to the keyhole garden and harvested the radishes from our winter planting.

Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!
Jen and Jewellyn


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