Blog Update by Taji and Brie

An affinity group is when a bunch of people come together who have something in common.  Last week we started race based affinity groups (RBAG).  We started in the gym with all the kids in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.  Laura, our ethics teacher, spoke about affinity groups and Rama interrupted Laura with a dance.  All of the teachers started to dance with Rama out of no where!  It was AWESOME!  We loved affinity groups.  After the groups met, we were able to talk about it.  We talked about the norms of the groups and how we felt about coming together with 4th and 5th graders.  At first we thought this would be hard.  After doing it for the first time, we feel really excited that we know other kids now and we feel more confident that we can share anything we want to in the group.

This is a video of the teachers dancing to “All About the Race”.  Enjoy!

Here is the official video that was posted by Rama:

Weekly Update from Caleb and Zachary

Week of January 15, 2015

In Woodshop we are learning how to wood burn so we can make lummi sticks and to make decorations we are going to wood burn on the sticks. Lidia is teaching us how to wood burn during woodshop. The tools are extremely hot so we have to be careful so we have to wear gloves and the tools are delicate. One is broken but it works well for making circles and different shapes like curvy lines and waves.

In science we are making a document about our trees and how they function. We are also learning the measurements of our tree, like how tall and how wide. 

In math we are learning addition and subtraction algorithms. Some people are also working on a big word problem like the ECFS bicycle picnic problem.

We have two trips we are looking forward to! We are going to the Natural History Museum and Greenbrook Sanctuary to hike. The Sanctuary was supposed to be a surprise but we found out. Ooops! We were told to bring a lunch, I wonder why. :)

In Social Studies Workshop we are starting to bead on our tunics. We already inked our design on the tunics so now we are beading over the design. We made these for the winter assembly.

In Art we are supposed to draw the details of trees and sky. Corinne is helping us think about the details needed of the type of tree we are making. For example, if it’s a climbing tree it needs to have branches in certain places.

In P.E. we are doing a lot of fitness and basketball. In ethics we are going into groups of our race to talk with 4th & 5th graders.

We are learning the names of our body parts in spanish.

In library we are doing book talks about books we have read.

Have a good 3 day weekend!

Happy New Year! (Last Week's Blog Post) - Cassidy and Andrew

Welcome to the first blog of 2015!  How was your winter break?  Ours were great!

In Social Studies, we started a new read aloud called Lightfoot.  It is about a boy named Lightfoot and he lived in an Iroquois Tribe.  We’ve only heard the first chapter so far and we listened to an audio of Harry reading the chapter.

In science, we’re learning how to use microscopes.  We looked at magazines, pencil shreds, pine needles from the Eastern White Pine Tree, and some other things.  When we looked at the magazines, we saw that the words and pictures were made out of dots.  The Eastern White Pine also had dots for taking in carbon dioxide.

Click here to do a word search. The word search has words from our Native American study in it.

Weekly Update by Alden and Colin

In science we have been very busy measuring our trees. We are seeing how many of “us” would measure the height of the tree. We marked on a piece of paper how tall our tree is and then we measured how tall we are and found out how many “me’s” fit in the tree using multiplication or addition. Then we estimated how tall the tree is by knowing how tall we are in centimeters. There are numbers all over the place! Click on the play buttons below to hear about how we figured out the height of our trees.

In Social Studies Workshop, we are starting to make designs for our tunics. We brought our iPads to class and used a website that let us bead different colors of our wampum. We liked using the technology in SSW and put the design we created on our iPads onto a piece of a paper.  We’re not sure if we’re going to put this design onto our tunics or if we are going to do  something else.

In art we are painting pots we made out of clay. We are making large coil pots and we glazed them last week. We will be able to take them home after the winter break. We used red clay to make the pots. We like making things with our hands and getting messy!

Today we performed Native American dances and songs at the Winter Assembly. It was really fun.

Happy holidays! Have a great vacation!

CBB and APH

Weekly Update of ALR and HAK

On the fifth of December we figured out how to develop good sportsmanship by having a class kickball game.  The way we made teams was by making kids with even numbers on their mailboxes/iPads on one team and all kids with odd numbers were on the other team.  It was fun and people showed good sportsmanship.  We learned to develop sportsmanship by playing one game, which is crazy.  Everyone said, “Great job!” and shook each others hands.  We also didn't bring up the subject of who won the game.  For the most part, we all had fun and supported each other.

In the middle of December, all three math groups (Jessica and Harry, Jamie and George, and Alexa and Rosemarie) had our first assessment of the year.  This was our first assessment and it was new to us.  Some people were nervous at the start, but while they were doing it they felt a little better.  The math assessment was about place value and what we did during the year so it was a reminder for us.

In science with Michael, our tree study this week has partly been about Latin names for the trees and partly about what uses of the trees there are.  One example of a tree’s use is that the Native Americans used Tulip trees to make dugout canoes.  We used an app called Popplet to brainstorm uses of the trees that our groups are studying. Henry's popplet is of the Redbud and Annika's popplet is of the Tulip Tree. You can see them below.

These are the trees we are studying:

Tree 1: Norway Maple

Tree 2: Sweetgum

Tree 3: Tulip Tree

Tree 4: Eastern White Pine

Tree 5: Eastern Redbud

Tree 6: Northern Red Oak

In Social Studies Workshop we made dessert dumplings out of all natural ingredients and just a little bit of sugar.  When we were making the ingredients everyone had two things to do.

Have a good winter break!

  

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

• WINTER BREAK IS COMING UP...BE READY!

• THIS FRIDAY IS A HALF DAY

• REMIND YOUR CHILD TO BRING SNOW BOOTS AND SNOW PANTS FOR RECESS.

• PRACTICE YOUR RECORDER!

• STAY WARM :)

• BRING YOUR BOOKS FOR LIBRARY!

Weekly Update from the week of December 1st by AG and JS

Weekly Update by ACL and JHH

We had visitors in 3S named Louis Mofsi and Raymond.  They are Native American people from the Thunderbird Dance Troupe.  They came to teach us The Robin Dance and they told us a story.  3S enjoyed learning the dance and hearing the story.  Later in the year we will be performing the dance.  Click below to see a video of 3S dancing The Robin Dance.

For SSW, we finished dying and sewing our tunics.  Most people are done.  In Art, we took home our pinch pots.  Corinne also hung our still life drawings of tree branches in the hallway.  You can see them outside our classroom

Some people’s parents came on Friday for the book fair.  You could get books, make your own books, or you could buy Fieldston clothing and accessories.

Every Friday we have a dance party at the end of the day.  We play freeze dance and if you get out you could go pack up to go home or stay and watch until the end.  If the song ends and you are still in, you win!   It’s really fun!

Last week we baked Corn Squash Bread for a Thanksgiving Gathering.  We will have the gathering with Harry’s class on Tuesday.  We are excited to eat the corn squash bread and play Native American games!

There will be no school on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for Thanksgiving.  Have a happy Thanksgiving!

From,

ACL and JHH