Fifth grade language arts students finished their character analysis after reading The Westing Game this week. We had fun creating "trading cards" for seven of the main characters (out of the 16 total characters in the book!) The students had to draw a picture on the front and write descriptions, quotes, insights, and interactions. We also had fun, since the book is a murder mystery, dreaming up the alibis that the character might present when accused of the murder of Mr. Westing. Take a peak at their work: Fourth grade math began our exploration of decimals this week. My goal this year is to allow students to gain more experience with math in hands-on, problem-oriented ways. To that end, I am taking a class on teaching math through a math workshop model (in other words fewer worksheets with lots of problems more big problems with multiple steps and integrated math concepts.) Third grade's exploration using this model of teaching had them exploring ways to create decimals using base-ten blocks to represent and then converting that decimal to the fraction equivalent too. They had to work in teams and find a way to organize their thinking and then be able to present to the class their findings. Here are some pictures as evidence of our work: Finally this week, after a week of lots of political talk, let me spend just a little of your time sharing some info about a topic that seems to tie politics and education together - the Common Core Standards. These new standards are the first time that the education world has tried to establish national standards for education. Like all changes, this initiative has its plusses and minuses. Colorado has adopted these Common Core standards by embedding the common core into our own state standards to create the Colorado Academic Standards. Common Core standards get a bad rap, I think, because they have become part of politics. And they require education to change and adapt which can be a challenge. Plus closely tied to the standards are all of the testing measures we now require. All of this has given the standards a bad rap. But really our new standards in Colorado just begin to put a focus on problem solving and critical thinking (what we call 21st Century skills.) The new standards establish for teachers what must be mastered in each grade level before students move on to the next grade level where their new teacher will continue to build upon previous knowledge. In that respect, the Common Core standards are merely a guide for how and what to teach students. Take 3 minutes and watch this video to better understand the Common Core. This video comes from the website CoreStandards.org
http://www.corestandards.org/what-parents-should-know/ If you want to know what the math standards are for your child's grade level, PSD has put helpful links on their website at: https://www.psdschools.org/math/parent-toolkit/standards
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Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
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