Taco Tuesday

I don't know about you but this is my favorite day of the week! The cafeteria even jumps on board with taco Tuesday! Our morning message was Taco-bout it Tuesday where I encouraged them to discuss our morning puzzles (brain teaser type things) with each other. They got the talking part but missed what they were supposed to talk about...

In academic block today, we all took Star Assessments. These assessments are one piece to the puzzle that is your child. They take these assessments in reading and math every year and we look for them to improve over time. Many of our students are already in the 99th percentile so it isn't as helpful for us as for others but again, it's still just one piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately, the Star website crashed and many of us weren't able to complete both today so we'll be back at it again on Thursday. 4th graders also used multiple perspectives to put themselves in the shoes of a homeowner. Mr. Smith is buying a new home and we showed them pictures of the property. Together in small groups, they looked over these pictures and wrote down things they noticed and wondered. This will make more sense after we discuss our intentions. :)

In math, in my room, we began by playing Buzz. We started with multiples of 4 and made it to 52! We tried multiples of 6 but couldn't make it further than 42. Then, we looked at multiplying by 10 and how this isn't "adding a zero to the end" but moving the place of the numbers changing the value. We also looked our the cool patterns from yesterday (and Danny showed us some amazing things his brain can do!) and went on to complete a problem but more importantly explaining how we solved the problem. I told them that I'm trying to slow their brains down so they can see what they are doing when they do it in their head so that when we get to harder problems, they'll know what to do! They took turns putting their work on the Apple TV and sharing their thinking with each other. Although we all got the same answer, we each solved it somewhat differently-which was neat to see!

In meeting, we shared what color crayon describes us best. I said rainbow because I like rainbows and what they stand for. Some other colors were: the darkest blue possible without being called navy, reddish-orange because they like that color, empty (whatever color that would be!), sparkly rainbow, sparkly yellow, gold, pastels... Then, we acted out the Fidget Family play. They seemed to really enjoy this! We also discussed making connections with others and getting out of their comfort zones.

We also had a pretty typical lunch and recess, a mostly quiet quiet time and finished up our complexity frames that we began yesterday. Ask your kiddo to see theirs and let them explain it to you!