Beyond intellectually stimulating and creatively inspiring, students are pushing their own writer's craft to include sensory details to help the reader feel like they are watching a movie, while they read. We identified snippets of professional authors' works and how they used sensory details to describe characters, settings, thoughts, and feelings through words that provoke the senses of smell, sight, touch, sound, and even taste. With such a creative lens and approach, our writing is coming alive. Over the next week, we will revise and edit our pieces, only to publish them in a rather more unconventional way as well. In just our brainstorming and drafting sessions, students are sharing ideas of how to present their work in a way that matches their writing - forcing their readers to feel and experience their writing, rather than just read it. We can not wait to see what marvels they create!
Earlier this week, I was guiding a student on how to calculate the average of his/her data and I took in a momentary at the community around us. What I saw was incredible; we were all busy in every corner of the room, all working at our own pace along this challenging journey to understand how to conceptually explain what average is and how to calculate it using addition and division. Sure, we as adults know the formula, but do we understand what it means? Did we know when we were in 4th grade? Did we know how and why and when to use it outside of our small classroom? If you were like me, than the answer is probably, "No." However, in our community it is not enough to understand how to calculate, but we strive to understand why and when to calculate and how to use this in real-life. There may be blurry eyes now and again, but each day our collective knowledge builds which each individual's contributions as we work towards the same goals. What a journey!
Some of you saw our work in our centers during Math Morning this week. We were so proud that you could actually see and feel what it is like to be here, learning with us. The culmination of our analysis, questioning, and extension of how we can use data all around us to express the world and our learning will be a Comic Life. This project includes calculations, explanations of data, and implications of the data. We all can not wait to share our hard work.
Our field trip to the clinic, as proposed by a student, was a marvelous success. The doctors their worked hard to extend our thinking by providing "real-life" scenarios of what they might encounter when treating patients. It is clear, checking the patient's pulse, blood pressure, and breathing is vital (ha - get it?) to understanding what might be ailing someone. Students were able to see how doctors, nurses, and clinic technicians use a variety of tools and equipment, such as an ultrasound machine to see soft tissue, take x-ray images to find fractures in bones, and hear with stethoscopes to identify abnormalities within the lungs or heart. Beyond that, solving the mysteries of why "Mr. Mike" and "Ms. Tina" were sick on their respective visits to the mountains and holiday in Tanzania, helped students investigate real-life causes of illness and how to take precautionary measures to keep our body healthy. When our mysteries were solved, we even had a change to listen to each other's hearts, look inside each other's ears, and see that hanging thing - our uvula - in the back of our throat with real doctor tools. Thanks to the clinic and its staff for all your support in expanding our minds and bringing real-life meaning to our learning.
Homework
Please continue to prepare your book presentation. Practicing your summary - including the setting, main characters, plot (main events), and conflict (problem) - helps the audience get a feel for the story. Try it! In addition to reading 20 minutes each night, please consider the following...Monday: Math Word Problems & Continuing Number Patterns activities
Tuesday: We learned a new math tool today! A website where we can practice our math facts. We are all beginning with basic addition to get used to the website first, and then we will change it to meet our needs. Here is the information you need to do your homework tonight:
1. Click here, or type this website into your browser (i.e. Chrome, Safari): xtramath.org
2. Click "Sign in"
3. Enter "Email": michaelr@tashschool.org
4. Enter "First Name": Click here to find your name (i.e. It is your IXL login without @tashkent)
5. Enter "PIN": Click here to find your PIN.
If you have tried for 10 minutes to log in and it just is not working, please email me and I will try to help. If I don't email you back within 5 minutes, please just try IXL. Happy Math!
Wednesday: IXL Math Grade 4 J.5, J.7, J.12 to practice graphing
Thursday:
Friday: Read for 200,000 minutes, while doing constant push-ups. Afterwards, you should have some lemonade.
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