Welcome back to the 2016-2017 school year! Thanks to those of you who were able to attend the Gifted Back-to-School night last week. If you were not able to, check out the "General Info" tab on the website to see the presentation from that evening. Each week I try to post a new blog so that you can get a glimpse into what we are up to in Knowledge Peak classes and learn helpful information about procedures and expectations in my class plus get occasional helpful information on parenting a gifted child. Since this is the first installment of "Peek at Our Week" this year, this one may be a little longer than usual. Each math class has already finished at least one topic (formerly known as a unit in our old curriculum) and has completed at least one assessment. Once I grade tests, students have the option of fixing their mistakes. My philosophy in math is that I care most that you learn the concepts. If you make mistakes, GREAT! Brain research shows that we actually learn a lot from making mistakes. If students are unhappy with their grade, they can choose to take a fix it sheet (see the picture on the right; click on it to see a larger copy) and must fix all mistakes by re-solving and analyze why they think they missed it. Their analysis are always interesting to read like admitting misunderstanding ("I thought billions were bigger than trillions") while other share mistakes in computation ("I thought 6X4 was 20.") If they turn this fix-it sheet back in with their test with all the mistakes corrected, I will give them back half of the points that they missed. Just know that sometimes they have time in class and sometimes they need more time outside of class so this may become a little bit of extra homework. A big part of learning is taking ownership of work and their grades. As long as a student does not get a D or F, they have the choice of fixing their grade. It is well worth it though to have a conversation with your child about your expectations for their grades and learning. Also on the topic of math, expect nightly homework Monday through Thursday from Peak math classes. I do occasionally let them have a night off though! Each week homework is worth a total of 20 points which means 5 points for each nightly assignment. It is pretty easy to get the 5 points. Take a peek at the poster to the left. All kids have a copy of this in their math notebooks, and we have discussed it. They know that the focus of homework is to do your best. We use it as a learning tool in class the next day so getting 100% correct is not a part of the point system. We certainly check it for accuracy, but much like my fix-it strategy for tests, students have opportunities to fix their mistakes. (Remember our brains learn a lot by making mistakes!) Homework should be review that they can complete on their own. If there is ever a night when you are too busy or they are too frustrated, simply sign your name on the homework, and that is my signal that you approve that the homework may be incomplete. And on the subject of homework, what if your child forgets their copy of the homework? The kids and I have talked in all three Peak math classes about problem solving options to take care of this. All of them require logging in to the Pearson enVision 2.0 website. I sent directions in an email this week but here are those steps again: 1. Go to PearsonRealize.com 2. Click "Sign on" 3. You will see a dragonfly; click on the buttom that says "EasyBridge..." 4. Now you should see a bridge picture; type in "Poudre..." in the school (and choose from the dropdown menu) 5. This will take you to the PSD single sign-on page (should have an apple on books in the picture) 6. Kids login using their 5 digit lunch number email ([email protected]) and then their four digit + first and last initial password 7. They should be into their account for enVision at that point and you can bookmark the page. So you know what I told them, you have three options from there:
4th and 5th graders should have written down what lesson in their planners. If they don't, you can look at the homework portion of my planbook at: https://planbook.com/planbook.html?t=974564&k=20162017 That is plenty of information for this week. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more! In the meantime, here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks. If you want to see all of the pictures, go to the Photos page on the website.
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To finish off the year, the 5th grade language arts/creativity kids adapted/wrote plays for the kindergartners based on popular children's books. They had the chance too act them out with Mrs. Johnston and Mrs. Hampton's classes the last week of school. Here are videos their awesome work! Three Little PigsClick, Clack, Moo: Cows That TypePout-Pout Fish in the Big, Big DarkDuck for PresidentBerenstein Bears - Too Much Junk FoodI would like to express a HUGE thank you to for families that helped out or contributed to Teacher Appreciation Week this year. It was a fun theme, and our staff got spoiled rotten! Thank you for the food and gifts! Hopefully you all got the email too regarding the GT parent survey. Your feedback will be helpful for us to continue to define how we meet the needs of students like yours at Werner. Take a moment to fill it out by June 3, please. Click on the link below: http://goo.gl/forms/YyqW7zaQzJ_ We had our last STEM Engineering challenge at the end of last week, and I had a chance to put the pictures together into a movie. I'll share those now in this week's edition of Three for Thursday. And again I want to thank Toshiba and our local Rotary club for providing the funds that made all of this year's challenges possible through their grant funding. Based on the feedback I have gotten from students so far, these days were probably their favorite activities we did all year. All of the pictures are also on the photos page of the website too: http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html The fourth grade challenge last week was to take their moon rover they had built during the March challenge, put their egg-stronaut inside and now build a moon lander to hold everything and survive the drop/landing on the lunar surface. Here is the video of their results: Third grade took on the challenge of building a tower out of lightweight materials that could be constructed on the moon or a distant planet that would be able to hold a transponder to communicate with Earth if necessary. This continued their look into how might we create back-up plans and increase safety for our space explorers through all of their challenges this year. Some of the third grade classes had done a similar challenge at the beginning of the year so this was a chance to use more materials and build on what they learned through their earlier experiences. Fifth grade has had such a busy schedule with testing and getting ready for middle school that their challenge was a one-day event this time. That didn't stop them from being successful in planning, building and testing in a short time-frame though. They were building magnetometers that might be placed in deep-space crafts that need to explore planets to help determine their make-up. NASA, in fact, does use magnets to pass over the planets surfaces. The presence of a magnetic field helps them determine the make-up of the core of the planet. In our case, the students were using grids on the top of our "planet surfaces" where magnets were hidden. Their devices then used metal shavings to determine where the magnets were hidden. Here is the video showing their work: I apologize for not blogging last week, but I was at Covenant Heights (freezing!) with the 5th graders at their Eco Adventure. We had a great time despite the snow and cold. My pink group had a fabulous time on the zip line and high adventure. And our girls cabin had fun playing games and singing songs. All of the pictures I took are on the photos link on this website. http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html Here are a few samples of some of the evidence of fun! Last night, I had the privilege of taking 10 of our top performing problem solvers to the Poudre School District Mighty Math Minds Tournament at Olander Elementary. Sierra, Dylan, Lydia, Sophie, Nick D, Jensen, Bryn, Quinn, Alex, and Sammi represented us, and they did awesome! Out of the 39 teams from the district, our teams placed 4th and 17th. And the most important part was they had fun doing math! Again take a peek at the photos page http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html _to see all of the pictures but here are a couple of shots of the teams: And the last update for this week are some pictures from our last STEM Engineering challenges for the year. 5th grade built magnetic detection devices that could be included in deep space exploration of remote planets. 4th graders built moon landers to hold their moon rovers from the last challenge. They also had to hold their egg-stronauts, and survive the landing unharmed (uncracked!) 3rd graders are building transponder towers that could aid communications from the moon or another planet in case of emergency. Once all groups have finished their challenges, I'll post the pictures and videos next week. Hard to believe that it is time to start planning activities for the last month of school! Our last STEM engineering challenge will be in May. I had to shuffle dates around to fit in field trips and book fairs and volunteer appreciation so the sign-up will look a little different if you are willing to help. Please check your email for a message from Sign-up Genius so that you can help. We have had help the last three times from Fossil Ridge seniors but they will be busy in May so please consider if your schedule will allow you to come have fun with us! Needs are 2 adults for each of these times: 4th grade - Wednesday, May 4, and Friday, May 6, at 8:50-9:50am 5th grade - Wednesday, May 4 ONLY at 10:30-11:30am 3rd grade - Wednesday, May 3, and Friday May 6, at 1:30-2:30pm I haven't had a chance to update language arts/creativity families about what we are up to lately so here goes. Fifth graders are reading Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. Although a short book, I love using this book to teach the students how to participate in Socratic Seminars. We have talked about who Socrates was and how he would many times not provide answers to questions but simply question more. The Socratic method looks a little like a debate but the purpose is not to convince someone that you are right but question your neighbor to think differently. The goal of a Socratic Seminar discussion is to question your peers to increase their their critical thinking. The fifth graders are suppose to be finishing reading the book by Tuesday and filling out their claims/counterclaims/evidence note taking so that we can participate in our Socratic Seminars on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. We are focusing on social issues that the book delves into. Ask your child what the questions for consideration are and have a chat about your position on these controversial topics. Third grade time is a little more light-hearted. We are reading four different fantasy books and continuing to learn how to participate and lead a novel study group. I love being able to sit in and join their conversations about important characters, changing events, and plot twists. All of the books have an element of fantasy and magic - some imaginative creatures like a Whangdoodle while others are reading about personified rats and cockroaches! Next week will be a challenge for the third graders. Because our time is quickly approaching the end, we will need to have two literature circles in one week (one on Monday and one on Thursday) in order to finish these books in time. This may require extra reading so please check in with your child to make sure they have their materials when you leave school and make a plan for how to keep up with the work. And finally, I received a thank you note from the Peyback Foundation for the 5th grade donation to Peyton Mannings' foundation after our Superbowl challenge with the River Gate Elementary 5th graders. Below is the note that came this week... Unfortunately with all the testing going on in our building, we haven't had much time for new material in Knowledge Peak classes lately. Let me briefly catch you up on where we are in curriculum currently and where we are headed... Fifth grade math students have been taking extra tests lately. This week we completed a paper-pencil test of 6th grade math standards to inform middle schools to make decisions about class placement next year. We'll take the math MAPS test next week which will be combined with last year's PARCC results in order for middle schools to collect data for that final determination. Fifth grade parents should see an email from middle schools in about mid-May informing you of the suggested class for your child for 6th grade. When we haven't been testing lately, we have been working on a rates and ratios unit. We have explored some "Three Acts" which are fun videos that engage students in mathematical questioning. We have watched jump roping, paint mixing, and snack making. While none of those may sound riveting to you, we have had fun using videos to practice our ratio building and rate determining skills. We'll finish up this unit early next week with a look at the Golden ratio and a final test on this topic. Furthermore, this last week was our last week trading on the Stock Market in our game. Students took time to meet with their teams one last time to buy, sell and trade and also fill out a final reflection for their assessment of learning. Here are a few things they had to say about their experience: The stocks will go up and down like a roller coaster. Good luck! - Nina I think XCel was a great investment because it got us tons of money and made us top of the class. - Milo Pepsico was a good stock because they have so many brands which makes it a popular company. - Jensen This experience will help in the future because I can make better decision and I'll know more about finance. - Sophie Fourth grade math students have been learning about converting between fractions, decimals and percents. We had some fun collecting survey data last week and determining how to express that data in percentages. We learned not very many adults like Mondays or liver (silly questions!) but over 50% of adults have read a book and gone to the movies in the last month. We'll continue with this unit looking at decimal operations before taking a test and moving on to our final units of the year - 3D geometry and measurement units. Lastly, third graders are still finishing up trying out our new math curriculum. We are in the middle of a unit on measurement, including time, mass, and capacity. The kids and I have all voted and we have decided the U.S. should switch to the metric system. It is so much easier to convert grams to kilograms and milliliters to liters! We'll take our test on this unit early next week and continue with our geometric math learning for a couple of weeks. We'll also be exploring strategies for problem solving such drawing pictures, organized lists, working backwards, using logic, and more focused practice. The goal of this work will be to prepare the students for next year's Math Olympiad challenges in which they will be participating. Don't forget to email me if you are interested in a spring conference. I am available most mornings before school and all day on April 8. Don't forget to check out all the latest pictures on the website too: http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html Last week was our third engineer challenge. This week's blog will be a chance to show you some of the great creative ideas the kids came up with to solve their challenged. Third graders were working on building a better parachute. We used Lego people as our test subjects. Their ultimate goal was to have the slowest descent with two tried from nine feet up. In the video you'll see we also had some great parent helpers to perform our tests and videotape for us too! Fourth grade performed part one of a two-part challenge. The first portion required them to build a moon rover. Their astronaut (raw egg!) had to fit snugly inside their rover and then points were rewarded for every inch their rover rolled. Next time we'll use the rovers to perform step two: build a lander to hold the rover and the astronauts. Fifth graders challenges continue to look at how we explore distant planets remotely. This time they were building a device that could take a core sample of a distant planet. For the sake of our tests, the core samples were food items, but the kids were beginning to learn some of the science elements behind how to create force and store energy in a simple machine. They came up with some great ideas! First of all this week, a VERY belated update from our Superbowl challenge with River Gate Elementary in Charlotte, North Carolina. The week after the Superbowl, both my 5th grade math students and Mrs. Godfrey's 5th graders all collected pocket change that we donated to the winning quarterback's foundation. With a little help with rounding from the teachers, we collected $173 that was donated to the Peyback Foundation, which helps disadvantaged youth get leadership training and opportunities in all of the states that Peyton Manning has played football in (Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, and Colorado.) Mrs. Godfrey's class also made my class homework passes to be used on any assignment the rest of the school year. If you don't remember the fun we had, check out this previous post to see the original blog entry explaining our challenge: http://traceybean.weebly.com/blog/three-for-thursday-february-11-2016 One housekeeping item, the district has set aside Friday, April 8 as the spring conference day. I will be working that day and available if any of you would like to meet with me to check on the progress of your child in my math or language arts class. Please simply email me to request a time. If the 8th does not work for you, I am available most mornings before school, as well. Today we began our third STEM engineering challenges in class. Fifth grade math students are devising an addition to a rover that could take a core sample of the alien planet. Our "corer" is a straw and our planet is a banana, cucumber, and potato. Students have to be able to get the straw into these "alien" objects to obtain a sample that their rover could test. Fourth grade math students are designing rovers. Their task is to create a vehicle that can hold an astronaut (an egg!) and roll around to explore the moon. Lastly, third grade math students are testing safety systems. This week's system is a parachute. We are dropping our astronauts (Lego people) from a ladder attached to their parachute creations to test materials that make good parachutes and test the size of parachutes and the number of parachutes... whatever factors that will allow survival. I'll post more videos and pictures after tomorrow's completions. This week I'll just take a moment to let you know what each grade level is studying in their time with me. Let's start with 5th grade... Fifth grade math class has been all about negative numbers lately. We have looked at how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide negative numbers. They have also used coordinate grids, order of operations, solving inequalities - all involving negative numbers too. We'll take our test on this number sense chapter next week and move on to a geometry unit reviewing perimeter and area and studying volume challenges. Upon return from Spring Break, it will be PARCC testing time, and we'll be finishing the Stock Market game (which ironically ends April 15 for us!) Fifth grade language arts students are finishing up what has been a long-term Peak Project. Each child picked a topic of their choice. Then they spent the last month learning how to do research, take notes, site sources, and write a research essay. They have been having to learn how to budget work time for a long-term project. In addition, all of our work for this has been in Google Classroom through Google Docs so they have a great knowledge of how to use these features as they move to middle school. (Many Preston teachers use these formats to have students complete assignments.) All essays were due today. Next week they'll be creating a visual project that can be used to present their learning to our group after Spring Break. Please check in with your student to see how they are coming along on all of this work. Fourth grade math students are just finishing up our unit on fractions. Adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions have all been on the agenda this last week. We'll take our test on this unit early next week, and begin a very quick unit on perimeter and area. The kids will do their last Math Olympiad contest of the year on Tuesday, March 8, too. When we return from break, just like 3rd and 5th we will enter the PARCC testing season so math and homework time will be limited. When we do have time together, we'll be completing a unit on decimals and percents calculations. Fourth grade language arts/creativity started again this week. The students will be with me during the whole month of March. We'll be reading Among the Hidden for literature circles and exploring the crazy-popular genre of dystopian literature through this book. We'll also continue our vocabulary work through our study of Greek/Latin root words in English. I think we'll have some fun with a reader's theater too and explore how reading a play is different than reading fiction or nonfiction. Third grade math class is continuing to try out the new curriculum with me. Our current unit in the enVision 2.0 text is looking at solving two-step problems involving all of the basic operations (+, -, X, /) using bar diagrams and letters in equations (AKA algebra - which they love when we talk about it because they feel so smart!) The test for this problem-solving unit will be early next week. We'll move on to a quick measurement unit after Spring Break between testing sessions. Third grade language arts/creative kids will rejoin my class again in April. Parents, you should be receiving an email from SignupGenius again for the March STEM Engineering Challenges happening again on Thursday and Friday the 24th and 25th. Your help is invaluable! And speaking of engineering projects, here are the videos from last week's second round of challenges. As was the case for the first round of challenges, groups met with some measure of success but also some spectacular failure. We continue to make the focus on having fun, learning to persevere, and working with a team. The extra lessons are working within a budget and best attempts at reaching the goal. Fifth grade's challenge was... Objective: Design and build a two-section, moveable robotic arm with that can lift an alien object (cup) off the surface (table) of the planet. Mission Brief: Once a rover lands on an alien surface, it must be able to perform science experiments for us remotely. We want this rover to be able to collect samples, take pictures, and monitor the environment. Your portion of the mission today is to design a robotic arm that can reach out and pick up an object and bring it safely back to you. This proved to be much more challenging than they thought as you will see in the video... Fourth graders had the following mission brief given to them: "You have now figured out how to build a rocket to leave the surface of Earth. The next step is to land on the moon. Now NASA needs you to design and test a shock-absorbing system that can help a craft get to the moon and land on the moon and safely deliver two astronauts for exploration without injury to them or their craft." Their craft was a 6-ounce cup and their astronauts were two large marshmallows. You'll notice in this video that our high school helpers also had a chance to try this challenge when they hung out with me during my planning time between 4th and 5th grades... The last group on each day are the third graders. Their task was to "Design & build the framework (6 X 6 X 6 inches) for a new capsule for astronauts that can hold up under the extreme pressure of space (math textbooks.)" We had fun making sure each structure was tested to the fullest (in other words until it was completely destroyed!) Check out the laughs we had with this project... |
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May 2018
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