Holiday Winners

Our Winter Holiday Round Robin Backgammon Tournament winners: Sophia and Erin M tied for first place; Lauren and JW tied for second; Tessa and Luke tied for third.

The whole class really knows the game. What fun.

And have you heard? We're researching a book on how playing backgammon can help teach math.

Happy New Year.

This Week

Students have a list of key concepts in the form of questions from History text chapters 13 to 22. This will help them prepare for our assessment on Thursday. They have previously created a practice test on the same material. I hope to use the best parts from these for the actual test. We all agreed it was fun and challenging to make up a test for once.

We hope to finish our essays about the novel Edward Tulane. We continue our St. Pete Pier Design essay project. Students learned how to compose a questionnaire to collect data as part of their research.

Our winter holiday round robin backgammon tournament continues. We have mostly finished ten of the 19 rounds. The final games will be played during our holiday party on Friday. The party is from 10 to 11. The Lower Division Sing-A-Long is from 11 to 12.

We are working on a new project to collect as many examples of how playing backgammon helps people learn or practice math skills. There's even talk of publishing our findings as an E-Book.

It's been a busy and successful 2011 for us all here. Thanks for all your support and enthusiasm.

Photo shows students doing an activity in Guidance Class with Mrs. Lippincott.

New Mexico Statehood

January 6, 2012 New Mexico celebrates 100 years of statehood. The 47th state has a great website about this centennial. View it here.

Photo of Christmas Eve in Santa Fe.

Holiday Gift Drive

Thanks for giving.

Fun with Multiplication

Vadim B. found this fun activity for us to practice our multiplication skills. He made a presentation using our class projection system.



Try it.



This is the lattice method for multiplying. Ask a fourth grader to explain it.

Charles Dickens Coin

We all share what we're reading with each other and why. So the class has been hearing about my current interest in all things Charles Dickens. I read and discussed with the class a brief illustrated biography of the great author as well. Now I've noticed a new coin honors him. He was born 200 years ago next Feb.7th, 1812.

Book Partners

Sophia V., Bella B. and Peighton S. (not pictured) have been reading and discussing the same book. Here they share with the class a few of those conversations.



In the photo above you can see some post-it notes that mark places that were thoughts that partners wanted to share with each other. In this case it was about an unusual paragraph which simply contained the names of old fashioned cookies. Homemade cookies are a theme in the book.

Which Dog Breed Makes for Most Successful Movie?

Jack Russell Terriers like my Lillian.

Movies in Consideration: Beginners, The Artist, Hotel for Dogs, The Mask, My Dog Skip

Composite Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74.8

Analysis: Math doesn't lie! The delightful Jack Russell Terrier really is the king of movie dogs, even with Hotel for Dogs factored into the score.

Reading Partners

Among the many reading activities we do weekly is partner share sessions. Here students are talking about the identity, perspective and conflicts faced by the lead character in their current novels. Partners are taught to be attentive listeners and ask relevant questions which extend the conversation. I listen to each student read, by the way, once a week and talk about some aspect with him or her. Finally everyone prepares two pages of notes about the book using the same formula we use for history. In a series of bullet points they note the identities of key characters, their perspectives, problems and solutions. Students also record their personal reactions to various aspects of the book, describe the theme in one sentence and define several memorable new vocabulary words.

This week we've also been identifying and sharing examples of well written sentences or paragraphs. More about this later.

The Pier in our future

http://www.stpete.org/pierdesign/

Last night students viewed and discussed the three designs that are competing to replace the aging and falling down St Petersburg Pier. Their preferences were explained in a written paragraph turned in this morning. In class during snack we looked again at highlights from each design team's proposals and discussed the merits of each project.

We're talking about: the wave vs. the eye vs. the lens.

I decided that this is a great way to practice writing an essay on a contemporary issue.

We realized our essays needed a paragraph explaining what the pier is and why it needs replacing. So students worked on this in class.

Next we plan to do some more research on the history of the pier which will become the second paragraph.

The paragraphs they composed last night will become the third part of the essay.

A fourth part will touch on the controversial issues that surround the pier project. Students will research and present the differing view points or perspectives on the future of the pier.

This is an important milestone in the history of our city. I'm pleased that we can be a part of it.

Starting this Tuesday the 3D models of each design will be on public display for free at the St Petersburg Museum of History.