Hello Platte River Families,
It was great to see you at the conferences last week! I hope you were pleased with the great work that your child has done since the last time you were here. Please feel free to visit anytime after school on Wednesday during office hours, if you'd like to see more of the daily work that is being done here!
Other than conferences, the days have been interrupted by the MCA reading test, which our students took on March 8th and 9th. Everyone did a great job staying focused during the test and quiet if they finished early. I'm happy to get back on track with regular lessons and work time now. The math portion of the test will be given on April 16th and 17th for Platte River students.
Our latest big work included a final report on an animal of choice. I had intended for this to be a short report that incorporated the classification of the animal and information about the animal's internal parts, movement, habits, etc. I was amazed at how complex some of the projects became! Running out of time became a common issue, and I think some students could have made this a year long project! I extended these for a week, and then had to ask students to make their presentations. I really enjoy seeing them show off and explain their work to an audience, and it's very interesting to see how they've matured in this effort!
In our language lessons, we've been working on various comprehension skills, and have now been practicing these on short stories. We have some very skilled readers among us, and had some lively discussions about our readings. Also, students continue to write stories as a choice work, and I'm amazed at their creativity and humor.
The large study of early humans will last for about three more weeks, with a final project coming right after our spring break. Students are learning that there is much more evidence and information as the time progressed, and a greater population of humans existed from which we can gather data. Posters of their work is spreading across our classroom walls!
After creating models of the decimal system, students are becoming more familiar in reading and writing decimal numbers, and learning operations with these number parts. Some students are using the decimal board to calculate addition and subtraction, while others are quick to learn how to just line up the number around the decimal point. One group has learned to use the decimal checkerboard to multiply decimal numbers, which has turned out to be much more fun than pencil and paper! This week we began doing algebra, and students are figuring out functions of algorithms with unknown numbers. This has become easy for those who are good at puzzles, and they are now designing some of their own for each other.
In honor of Pi Day, I told the story of Archimedes and how he figured our the relationship of a circle's diameter and its circumference; there are 3.14159... diameters in the circumference. This required students to learn some new vocabulary words (radius, diameter, circumference, irrational numbers to name a few) and parts of a circle. I think they would have been happier if we just ate pie!
I hope the promise of spring, and its lighter days and warmer weather find you renewed and hopeful! Happy Spring!!
Mary
PS We're looking for a family to take care of our birds during the spring break. They should be picked up on Friday, March 30th and brought back on Monday, April 9th. They are not hard to care for, and can be left alone for up to three days. Thank you in advance!
Platte River is in great need of the following supplies:
Napkins
Disinfectant Wipes
