Sorry for the silence. A plethora of short weeks and I fell out of blogging practice, but I can assure you we’ve been hard at work.

Fourth grade math has been learning about geometry. With that has been a lot of work on vocabulary and word parts. Some students have expressed an interest in learning more about how words work. We’ve reviewed characteristics of quadrilaterals and how to classify them, we’ve talked about angles, sides and what congruent means and what it looks like. Today, we moved from static geometric images to how they move within a coordinate plane. I introduced them to the concept of a coordinate plane and how it relates to latitude and longitude. Then we moved on to the heart of the lesson – which was geometric transformations – reflections, translations, rotations, and glide reflections. We’ll continue this exploration for the rest of the week.

Third grade reading will be doing a fairly in-depth research project during the course of the year. One important aspect of research is the ability to think critically about one’s sources. To that end, be sure to ask your child about how they can save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. We touched a bit on biases and being sure to find out who is doing the writing.

Second grade math dipped their toe into fractions this morning. Students will be using cuisenaire rods to aid their conceptual understanding of fractions. They were pretty sure they knew all the things they needed to know about fractions until I asked them if a half was always the same size. There was some spirited debate, but it also became clear that they still have much to learn.

Second grade reading spent their time writing their stories. A few students are still working on their plot diagram, but the time spent on that will pay off when they do start to write. Reminding students to use what they’ve learned in their classrooms on this writing has proven to be more challenging than expected, but it’s good practice.