Katchen Kids Week 12 & 13

We have been busy for the last few weeks. Here are some things we have been doing:

In Reading, we have taken what we learned from our whole class historical fiction genre study and book club lessons and started small group historical fiction book clubs. This was a great way to see what each student learned and applied. It also was so wonderful to hear how social reading can be and how excited they were to talk about their books with each other. 

In math, we have been working on bar modeling with word problems. Practicing and applying what we have learned about regrouping and place value with addition and subtraction up to 10,000. 

In Science, each student presented what they learned about crayfish as the teacher. Learning how to teach others what they knew. These presentations were well organized and a great way for students to work on their listening and speaking skills. 

In Social Studies, we are studying communities and what makes a community thrive. We are looking at Chicago and our antipode city, Perth, Australia. The students are having great discussions and debates about what makes a community thrive vs survive.

In writing, we finished up our narrative writing unit and are celebrating this week by reading each other published pieces. We are also learning how to write a literary essay using short stories to learn how to write a thesis with text evidence to support our thinking. This kind of writing is the beginning of the essay writing that students will use through college and beyond.

We also acknowledged 3 students for the November Pride Board: Sully for his persistence, Clara for her positive mindset, and Finn for his grit. Congratulations to all three!

Top Chef: Speical Talents started with Clara teaching us about playing the violin and Caleb teaching us about football catching and passing. Then Trevor taught us about ice and roller hockey and Perry taught us about soccer kicks and passes. These Special Talents have been amazing presentations. 


Take a look at some photos of our last 2 weeks: 























































































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