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.