Week of March 19- March 22

The learners continued drafting their persuasive papers this week. There were many aspects that were either reviewed or introduced with this form of writing. They continued worked on beginning paragraphs with topic sentences, having the rest of the paragraph relate, and using transitional phrases such as "First of all..". They talked about the best way to creat a call of action being using sentences that start with active verbs.

We talked more about how we infer when we read. That we continually draw conclusions from what is not being said explicitly. We did this last week by reading factual primary documents of the excitement surrounding the Gold Rush (mentioned last week). We also talked about inferences in the book, By the Great Horn Spoon! The learners are working on doing several different activties along with reading their books to help them have a good quality discussions in their small book groups and as a whole class.

We connected the importance of reading with math by reading "actively" to answer problems that used a chart. Strong math skills were not the only skills needed to navigate the information on the chart and the questions. Some brought home their "Gold Mine" Charts to finish at home.


We also looked at fractions based on formulas. We used a variety of manipultatives (cubes, rods, pattern blocks, graph paper, and our fingers) to find out more about fractions. If we know one piece, than could we figure out the rest? Learners explored this concept through the use of maniputlatives. For example, if 8 squares of graph paper is eqaul to 2/3, than what is 1 whole or 1/4? It was a nice way for learners to make connections about fraction equavalents. We use a "peanut butter" strategy to support this where learners think about how the pieces would change if they were peanut buttered or stuck together. Want to learn more? Ask your learner how they would reduce 5/20? They also noticed that most of the time the fractions that could be reduced were both even numbers in the numerator and the denominator.

We had a great discussion today about the assembly. The learners brought up some insightful questions and powerful feelings. We decided that we represented the group that had everything and that we could do something about it within our classroom. Learners were asked to go home and talk about ways your family might already participate in helping others. One learner mentioned a girls school in Ethiopia and another mentioned sponsoring a local family through their church. We are going to share what we discover and decide how we want to move forward.