LEARNING UPDATE

Families, it is smooth sailing in the Ecoschoolhouse while I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new baby girl who will arrive any day now and the Cardinals are entering the NLCS.  Below you will see the focus and upcoming learning for each subject.

Reading: Students are in a book club centered around books with a Native American theme.  We are learning about story elements this week in our Literature Journal.  Each week during our book clubs we will have a week long assignment focused on a certain reading skill.  Our reading will also impact our social studies Powwow theme which focuses on Native American culture.  These books can be used for book share work too.

Social Studies:  Historians are learning about various Native American regions.  We are focusing on the landforms and resources natives used in their daily life.  After we learn about each region with a group poster, we will start to research a Native American topics to become experts on and create a museum exhibit for.

Here links to a few videos we watched to support the natural resource to capital resource idea:

BAMBOO HOMES OF BALI

A TASTE TO CORK

PLAINS NATIVES BUFFALO USES

Writing: In writing this week, we are finally completing our I AM poems.  Students have written descriptive phrases in a poetry format to describe their personalities.  Students who finished early are investigating with iMovie as they recite their poem into a movie format. This great work will be hanging up in the hallways soon.

Math: As I hope you have seen, we are focusing on multiplication during our math time.  As a class, we have studied properties of multiplication, the power of estimation and we are starting on using the algorithm with more challenging numbers.  Students have many opportunities to practice in class and we also have extension activities and math games for those who finish their practice early.

Science:  This week in science we are reflecting upon our community experiences.  Students are finishing their notes for the 3 places that inspired them the most.   I will grade these 3 notes and scientists are using them to create wordles to represent their ideas (example below).  We will use this reflection work to guide our year long experiments and community project.  You can try a wordle yourself here:  http://www.wordle.net/

Students have also continued observing in our gardens at school.  This week Avrill and Ysana found the dark white-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata) moth caterpillar below.  Finally, Mr. K and I won a grant to buy GoPro cameras and nature guide books to help inform our observations in the future.

 

 

  

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

This picture is of the Garden Ecosystem Display 5th grade made last year. Yesterday before the Travel Show many students helped update the QR codes an get it ready for the CCUA Harvest Hootennany at the Urban Farm tonight. There will be good food, music, and prizes.  Mrs. Nies and I will be there unless Junior makes other plans!

As for the Travel Show, thank you to all the All Star families, students, and staff that visited and supported our successful afternoon.  We worked right up to the last minute and kids should be proud of their fantastic work. I look forward to grading each island and enjoying their creative writing. Below is a panorama of our class during our celebration.

TRAVEL SHOW INVITE; CITIZEN SCIENTISTS

Families, I meant to send home an invitation to all for the Travel Show tomorrow.  The invitation is posted below.  Please come and see all our very creative geography and writing work.  You are welcome to come anytime between 12:30 and 3:00.

Yesterday in reading we continued our focus on summarizing.  Part of this required us to take a look at setting.  We also practiced located important information while reading articles about Monarch Butterflies.  This work was prompted by our amazing observation of a caterpillar turning into a chrysalis on the brck wall at Grant School!  Alas, the chrysalis was squished and did not survive.  We missed a great opportunity to view an incredible part of nature.  Anyhow, we memorialized "Chris" the monarch chrysalis with a poem and each student posted facts about monarchs for the whole school to learn.

Here is the chrysalis that formed right after lunch on Tuesday!

Here is the poem to help teach about "Chris" and a QR code to two videos we watched in class. 

Kids posing by there monarch facts!

In science, we have progressed through our bird feeder experiment.  Students are learning the expectations of science experiment work concerning data tables, graphs and conclusions.  This has also allowed us to incorporate many of our math skills. When Junior arrives (any day now!), the kids will work on small experiments in the classroom with the substitute.

In math, we have prepared for out math test today.  After this test, we will focus on multiplication of while numbers from 2 digit to 3 digit numbers.  This is a good time to practice some facts at home.

This Saturday is the CCUA Harvest Hootenanny.  This is a fun event for all, kids and adults with music, games and good food.   CCUA has helped our school with funding and materials for many of our science adventures.  Plus, our Garden Ecosystem display will be at the festival!  

Hope to see you tomorrow at the Travel Show.

IMPORTANT DATES UPDATE

Families, today's last field trip to the City Council building was very purposeful.  Students got advice on planning their islands from our Sustainability Director, Barbara Buffaloe, and we also learned a bit how city government works with a meeting with City Manager, Mike Matthes.  Students are spending the rest of the day working on their islands.  We also have a special performance today from the Music Makers, a relief foundation that supports musicians.  I have added some important dates to the right (including NO SCHOOL on Monday!) and the Travel Show next Friday.  See you all at the Grant School Blues Corps performance tomorrow at noon at Stephens Lake!

HAPPY ARTS N BLUES NIGHT!!! (followed by a long update)

The scene on the playground was festive!  What a great evening for Grant School!  I want to thank all the staff and family volunteers who organized this special event.  The kids have been practicing all week for their performance this weekend at the Roots n Blues BBQ festival.  Arts N Blues night helps support the fine arts at local schools and allows Ms. Sission to provide authentic arts experiences and learning opportunities for our All Stars.  Way to go, kids!  Way to go families!  Thanks TJ Wheeler!  We will see you this Saturday at Stephens Lake Park.

Our Blues Corps students also kept up with our academic load this week.  In reading, we practiced clarifying questions using short magazine articles supporting our community experience.  Articles included a piece on closing post offices, and forest firefighters.  Next week, we will have more time for reading our fiction books. 

For writing/ss, students primarily focused on drafting ideas for their Island Travel Brochure.  They used examples of past student brochures to help them brainstorm ideas.  Next week, we will create final copies of our Travel Brochures as we prepare to display our island work during the Travel Show next Friday afternoon, October 3.  At the Travel Show, we will also reveal our landform quilt from Art class with Ms. Christiansen.  Some students will also help edit websites from our Garden Ecosystem display so the display is ready to use at the annual CCUA Harvest Hootenanny. Students also addressed letters to our tour guides for all these field trips.  We are sending our helpers a thank you and an invitation to tour the Ecoschoolhouse!

During math, we practiced our large number and decimal subtraction and addition.  Most of our numbers and tasks during lessons came from measurements from our bird feeder science experiment or were related to our community experiences.  For example, we rounded times from the bus map and compared zip codes the day of the USPS trip.  We also had authentic task of subtracting decimals as we figured the weight of bird seed birds were eating out of our feeders. There will be a test over this unit next week.

Science this week consisted of four community field trips.  Photos of trips from this "Government Week" are on the CPBL link to the right.  This is our last week of trips!  We finish with time in the City Council room.  In one week, students have stood atop an ancient, immense limestone bluff and viewed historic limestone buildings downtown.  We viewed history of the city through art and relics.  Next week, we will finish our notes and reflect upon our observations.  We will also continue our bird feeder science experiment by looking at results, graphing and conclusions.

Part of my focus next week will also be settling into a classroom routine of all day focused classroom learning.  It will be great for our class to enjoy some more class learning time together as we close out a couple projects and look to the rest of the year.  I also will be preparing them for a substitute to take over as guest teacher for a time when my new baby daughter is born! 

SOLID COMMUNITY LEARNING

Today was a day of well integrated community learning.  We started our day practicing questioning and clarifying while reading a new Scholastic news article about forest firefighters. Next we practiced rounding decimals and subtracting decimals using information from the Columbia transit bus map. After lunch we observed resources at the Columbia fire department and learned about our local history at the Columbia bus station.  The bus station was built in 1910 from limestone blocks similar to the limestone cliffs we had class beneath last week. The students noticed many similarities of the bus station to the eco-schoolhouse such as reused materials, vaulted ceilings and a LEED Silver award (we have Gold!). Students may be drafting their paragraph about transportation for their island tonight. We even had a short lesson on matter as students learned about the triangle of fire and iron oxidation. Enjoy pictures below of our two classrooms from today:  

INSPIRATION!

Today was an impressive day of learning in the Ecoschoolhouse.  Students spent their morning observing Stewart Park with their preschool buddies.  The 5th graders assisted their young working friends with science tools to observe living and nonliving specimens in the park.  We celebrated our time viewing insects, plants, birds, and such with Chaco showing off his frisbee skills. 

After a walk back to the Ecoschoolhouse, we discussed the Commutative Property of Addition using decimals we recorded in the field yesterday observing stream organisms.  In the afternoon, students were very focused as they worked independently on their science notes from recent experiences.  We will use their notes to guide our discussion about our community science project for the year. 

I also met with every student today about reading and writing and on their island project. At the end of the day, we celebrated each student who made progress on their work habit goal for the week.  Every student was able to make a choice about how to end the day.  Most enjoyed free time on their new devices.  We discussed some appropriate use expectations and students had fun downloading a few fun apps to their device.  After all, we had been very professional and responsible with the iPads up so it was good to have the kiddos enjoy them in a personal way. 

Below you will see photos taken by students over the past 24 hours.  Students are organizing their scientific observations and questions of these expderiences.  After this time in the field, the kids did a wonderful job as focused learners in the afternoon today.  Enjoy!

This vulture shot was taken by an experienced student birder.

This prairie is burned in some Springs which helps promote native plants. We also observed a native plant rain garden this day.

We are seeing many more trees and rock on our walks.

This was the view of our classroom today!

This student appreciated the limestone landscape.

There is a lizard on the very edge of the cliff!

Jackson observed the tall tree on the left has a large nest.

I heard tales of a large caterpillar...

...and I'm so proud of this scientist for using their hand as a measurement landmark!  That's a big caterpillar!

This is a limestone cliff!

Scientists asked about plants growing in the cliff and we discussed the 3 types of rocks: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous.

Okay, these bones are still in my science bag.  We will have to have an identification contest!

Great shot.

Scientist at work.

We have seen these grasshoppers often, as well as a longer, spotted brown one.

And yet another organism to identify!

We helped our preschool buddies observe with science tools.

Our buddies were already categorizing living and nonliving things before observed some together in observation jars. I was very pleased with how well our 5th grade All-Stars were serious in their job of modeling scientist behavior.  This a very successful buddy trip to Stewart Park.