Poetry

April is poetry month, so we started a bit early yesterday with our poetry unit.  The students were very excited!  We began with some poems about spring, as well as some silly poems from the wonderful Shel Silverstein. Each student has his/her own poetry booklet, in which we have begun pasting a few poems and writing our reactions/responses to them.  Some students have started to write poems of their own.  We will continue our poetry study after the break.

Planting Seeds

The children planted beans with Mrs. Brennan about a week ago and were very excited to see some of them starting to sprout towards the end of last week!

I was so excited to see some of the student's artwork in the windows of Starbucks on Main St. this weekend!  They should all be so proud!

Our Environment, Buddy Writing, and Measurement

This week in Social Studies we began our next unit on the environment, including how people use their environment.  We will be learning about natural resources and pollution. This week the children brainstormed all the things we "catch, gather and grow" (they decided  many things belonged in more than one category, hence the arrows!) and we made the following list of things we use for food, clothing, and beyond.

Buddy Writing: Giving each other feedback on our stories.

Estimating and measuring lengths and distances around Angell School!

Arrays

Arrays are a wonderful way to visualize repeated addition, which is the beginning step of multiplication.  We have been working on problems such as the one below, and using examples such as rows of tomato plants, rows of desks in a classroom, etc.  Arrays are all around us and learning to use them is a life skill that we use even as adults.  Ex. "How much tile will we need to retile the kitchen?" The children had many examples such as these and I encourage you to help them continue to make those connections at home and point them out when you see them!

Real life examples of arrays:

Another example of repeated addition / multiplication, looking at how many sticks of gum in three packs of gum:

 

Sound!

Yesterday we were fortunate to be visited by the Hand-On Museum for a special workshop on sound. The students learned about vibrations, sound waves., and how sound travels through solid, liquid and gas.

(The kids had a great time making origami creations for their pen pals today-- I was busy helping them fold and wasn't able to snap any photos.  Huge thanks to Aya's family, Mayu's family and Maho's family for donating all the origami paper!  Those three girls were wonderful expert helpers to students who needed assistance!)

Brain Awareness

We had a wonderful time learning all about the brain yesterday from Angell parent Shelly Flagel and other neuroscientists from UM.  They were unable to bring the human brain, but we did have a chance to see (and touch, as an option!) a real sheep's brain.  We also examined rats' brains and skulls, learned about the hemispheres of the brains, and what a neuron does.  Big thanks to Mrs. Flagel for sharing her time and expertise with us!

We also went on a field trip yesterday to Hill Auditorium to hear the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra perform "Red, White and Flutes", a tribute to American composers.