Weekly Update

Dear Families,

The students are making incredible progress in their research and information gathering phase of our Colonial America unit. The week before Spring vacation, we studied colonial education and this week we emphasized colonial houses and jobs. Please ask your child to describe what these houses looked like. Ask your child to describe what the keeping room was. Also ask your child to explain what a Dutch oven was used for and why blacksmiths were in such high demand. If you and your child wish to do additional research, please visit our classroom wiki for pre-linked educational sites on these topics (Click here). You can also conduct your own independent searches on the Search Engines site, also linked on our classroom wiki (Click here).

The students’ hard work in this unit was celebrated in a very special way this week. I had the privilege to present our classroom’s use of 21st century technology tools to all the School Boards of CSSU. In particular, I had the opportunity to highlight the students’ ability to utilize various technology tools to conduct research effectively as well as communicate and collaborate. As the students get more comfortable and self-reliant using technology tools in the academic setting, their ability and willingness to share information and knowledge amongst themselves have increased. Most casual observers of technology would perhaps argue that technology isolates individuals and discourages inter-personal interaction and collaboration. The outcome has been quite the opposite in our classroom, however. The more technology the students are exposed to, the more they share amongst themselves. They are invested in their own learning and know how to quickly and efficiently share resources with each other as they communicate by sharing urls and web-sites with each other. Please talk to your child about this development at home and discuss the benefits from sharing information. Next week, the students will continue this collaborative effort as they learn to use google docs and e-mails to send links to each other.

In math, 3rd graders continue their work on probability. Next week, we are invited to visit the 7th and 8th grade Probability Fair as we join Maria Duryea’s class. We are very excited about this opportunity. We will share more on this next week. 4th graders continued their work in geometry this week as they explored perimeter and area.


Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack