September 12th Update! & Approach to Math

Hello Everyone!

We had another great day in MACC, and we are starting to get into some routines!

Schedules:

Just so everyone knows, the schedules in the school for music, library, and gym have not yet been finalized, so we have a temporary schedule until then. When it is all set, I will publish a class calendar. This week: Music on Monday/Thursday; Gym on Tuesday/Friday; Library on Tuesday.

Essential Agreements:

Today we talked about the difference between the rules of the school and classroom and essential agreements. While rules are given to you to follow for the safety and organization of everyone, agreements are what we ALL agree to do to make our community a better place. Here are our essential agreements, as given by the students, so far:

  • Respect others and their things
  • Help people when they need it
  • Be kind and caring to one another
  • Disagree with ideas, not people
  • Use appropriate language
  • Don’t judge people
  • Be honest
  • Be responsible
  • Listen carefully
  • Better late than never (referring to turning in work)
  • Think positively and encourage others

We will review these again over the next two weeks and ensure they work for us!

Mathematics:

We are still finishing math assessments, but today we took a break from those to start our new unit of math. We will have five larger units of math that are connected with our inquiry units. Our first is called Crunching the Data! During this unit we will discuss data gathering, graphs, probability, fractions, decimals, and percentages as related to analyzing information through numbers.

The math in our class will be taught through hands-on activities that have a high ceiling and a low floor design — meaning everyone can be involved regardless of level, applying mathematics while still acquiring all math curriculum from grade 4/5 and beyond. After we finish the assessments, then I can see if anyone will need additional challenge beyond our applied math activities and projects. We will briefly talk about this during our parent intake meetings on Sept. 20/21.

Today I gave everyone a task to see how they could handle their data! We will work on it today and tomorrow. With a partner, students were asked to:

  1. Create a survey question(s) to ask every member of the class and Ms. D.
  2. Make sure it is an interesting question that we want to know about. Make sure it does not involve a yes/no answer and that people can give a variety of responses.
  3. On the large graph paper provided, create a visual graph of your choice (bar graph, pictograph, line graph, pie chart, etc.) that will display the data in an interesting way. You may organize the data in a way you think will be the most interesting to the class. Make sure you include all the proper parts of a graph.
  4. If you are able, include on the graph the percentage of the class who responded for each answer to your survey. If you don’t know how to do this, that is okay, and just show what you do know.

Gym and Library!

We had our first session in both the gym and the library today!

For gym, we talked about how our focus will be discussing how physical activity helps the body, heart health, and some yoga as related to mindfulness, de-stressing, and balance. On gym days, please make sure you have a water bottle, extra shirt, and running shoes. Sandals and outside boots don’t work well for running. The water bottle means you will have water during class and not have to run to the water fountain. An extra shirt is important so you have the option to change if you are sweating a lot from our activities.

For library, we learned about how to check out books and rules of the library space. Students at grade 4/5 may check out 4 books at a time, and they need to physically bring them back each week on our library day, even if they want to renew them. (If students need books for an assignment that Ms. D has given, extras are allowed, but only when we are doing research projects.) Ms. Ho will be providing a letter for parents about the mature reads in the library in the next couple of weeks. If you read at a high level, you will need permission from parents to check out mature reading books that are typically reserved for grade seven students due to some sensitive material.

Unit Question:

Thank you everyone for doing the human body brainstorm last night! Everyone received their first homework mark and we went over the “checks system” together. Remember to bring your journal back to school each day.

Tonight’s task is to ask your family about their medical history, which means asking at home if parents have had any operations, illnesses, or broken bones, etc. This task is not meant to collect information to share out loud in class, and it does not need to be written down if anyone is uncomfortable about the information being shared. The task is to create conversation between parents and children about past medical experiences. Please only share what you feel comfortable sharing. Ms. D shared a personal experience of having her gall bladder removed, as it was an opportunity to talk about organs in the digestive system and how you can live without one of them!

Reminders:

  • Save the Date: Sept. 20-21 Parent Intake Conferences
  • Pro-D Day/No School on Sept. 25th Monday
  • Save the Date: Sept. 28 Field Trip to Science World with MACC 4/5 Cap Hill
  • PAC Notice went home tonight
  • Cross-Country Running Team Notice went home tonight (only those who went to Monday’s lunch meeting and returned forms to be on the team)

Thank you everyone!

Good night!