Fourth graders continued to work on geometry. Today we talked about symmetry. I snuck in a lesson on vocabulary, reviewing the root sym and metr and how they work together. We reviewed other words with similar roots. Symmetry didn’t seem to present much of a challenge, so we’ll move on to place value a little earlier than planned. Place value is my favorite and will definitely make their heads’ hurt.

Third grade reading went back to reading today. They were a little unhappy because they knew there was summarizing in their future. I know they’re still frustrated, but they have made so much progress! Where only one part of the summary was correct before, most students were getting two or three pieces of their summaries correct.

Fractions are still giving second graders a headache, but in the best possible way. The best part of the entire exercise is that students are also way more comfortable asking for help. They’re better at asking for help – they can tell me what they get and what they don’t get and can ask specific questions about their work. We’ve been using cuisenaire rods, which are a great way to learn about fractions. Students were given a specific rod and told, “If this rod is 3/4, what is the whole?” or “If this piece is 1/5, which piece is 2/5?”

Fourth grade reading’s time will be split between two projects. We’ll be reading A Wrinkle in Time and having those discussions on Tuesdays. Students will be allowed to choose an independent study project, but first we’re going to ask some questions, do some primary source research and talk about some really big ideas. Today I posed a few big questions to get some initial thoughts:

• What is freedom?
• What is the role of government?
• What rights should all people have?
• Is violence ever OK?
• What other questions should we consider?

Third grade finally had the big reveal on Torran Numerals. They were working in Base 4. We drew pictures of the Base 10 chart and drew a Base 4 chart. This blew a lot of minds and will take a few days to settle in and to really understand. We’ll continue to work on this for the next few days. As we ended class, I asked them to do an addition problem in Base 4. We didn’t finish, but we’ll start again tomorrow. They will be encouraged to use math manipulatives as a way of building understanding. Learning and understanding bases other than Base 10 will really cement students’ understanding of Base 10 – specifically regrouping which can be tricky as students begin to apply mathematical computation.