Another Week that T'was!

Another busy week gone by!  Here are the highlights of what we were working on!

Inquiry - after the construction period from the week before, we were ready to start testing our homes!  We performed 2 tests, a load test and a waterproof test.  We learned some valuable lessons from these tests (such as drywall mud is not waterproof, and without a waterproof base our structures were going to leak)!  Most houses held up well to the load test.  We will hopefully finish our testing and redesign reflections this week and start on a new inquiry shortly!

Math - we began an early investigation into multiplication looking at a math problem from Cathy Fosnot called "The Grocery Store Problem".  Students viewed the poster below and experimented with different strategies to count the objects in the store.  Students worked with a partner to create a poster where they showed the different strategies they used to solve the problems.  Watch for your child's post on IRIS with their poster and reflection.  Key concepts we were developing was the idea of equal groups and that we can create a number sentence using the multiplication symbol of "x" which means "groups of."  For example:
3 groups of 4 apples can be shown as 3x4=12.  We will continue to develop this concept over the next while in mathematics.

Writing - students continued to explore the topic of "Winter" by trying to create vivid descriptions of things you see, hear, feel, touch, and smell in winter.  We are going to be using descriptive sentence starters to create a paragraph about the season.