This Week in Review - May 14 - 18

                                       This information is also found in Walter's weekly email:

This week we took advantage of the beautiful warmer weather to take a couple of field trips, both of which involved careful observation and sketching. The first field trip took place on Tuesday as a culminating event to our Raptor Project, started in November/December. We finally got a chance to meet the raptors we sponsored as a result of our very successful "birdie bake sale", and traveled to Leslie Science and Nature Center. The second field trip took place on Friday as part of our ongoing City Project. We went to Island Park to look at a fine example of a bridge, as inspiration for our bridge building in our cardboard installation. Getting out into the real world is so important.

In math, we branched out to TWO dice data collection. After a couple weeks of probability work using just one die, all students were secure in knowing that there is a one-out-of-6 chance in getting any number when the die is rolled. There is an equal chance in getting any of those numbers. Now we are collecting data on sums if two dice are rolled - is there an equal chance of getting any sum of 2 through 12?  At the beginning of the week, children were divided in their opinion. After a week of playing a data collecting game we saw patterns develop, and now all children can see that some sums are much more likely than others, as there are more ways to get to them. 

And, of course, the Singapore books are being used for about 20 minutes per day, at each students own pace. 

EB's continued this week, and children are really loving them. It is a nice change of pace and fun for everyone to mix it up with others from different classrooms. We also are getting extra chances to work and play with the other first and second graders from Grace's room in Science - Shan is combining the students for the next couple weeks and doing double science times too. We had science lab on Wednesday AND Thursday this week, and will again next week. This week, students worked through stations with animals tracks and scat. 

We sent and received our third pen pal letters this week. We plan on doing one more set of letters (the big reveal!) and then having a celebratory picnic.