Fourth graders started a new activity today. It’s called What’s the Missing Side? We reviewed our work of a few weeks ago that asked them to construct visual proofs for multiplication. This activity asks them to determine the missing side of a rectangle if given the area and the length of one side. Needless to say this caused a lot of consternation as they grappled with the idea. Two groups have come up with a strategy – though both strategies are different – and one group is very close to determining a strategy to answer the question. The next step is to ask them to create a visual proof that explains their strategy to other students.

Each group in third grade reading has finished their assigned Cinderella story: they’ve read it, determined the important story elements, and filled out a plot diagram. Tomorrow students from each group will be redistributed into new groups where they will share their Cinderella stories with students from different groups. Our goal is to see how stories change based on the setting, but also on what is important to a culture. Students who finished earlier than others were allowed to choose a different Cinderella story to read.

Second grade is struggling a little in their exploration of geometry. They’ve been asked to create 2-D shapes and to describe their attributes. Precision is not necessarily something second graders have been asked to worry about. In the dungeon, as they like to call it, it is required. Groups have had to go back multiple times to revise their list of attributes if it was not quite accurate. Once they completed that, they were able to move on to 3D shapes. They will compare the attributes of 2D and 3D shapes by the end of the week.

Second grade reading quickly reviewed the story Four Feet, Two Sandals and together, we completed a plot diagram for the story. I then read I Want My Hat Back to them. On Friday, we’ll review the book and they will work in groups to determine the story elements for the book: characters, setting, problem and solution. They were also introduced to the “Somebody wanted but so” method of summarizing. Ask them to tell you about it – it’s a quick and easy way to summarize a book in a single sentence.