Class was very short this week due to testing in the morning. However, they still managed to get a lot accomplished. Most students have moved on to blueprinting their house, a couple have moved into digital blueprints, and one has finished his digital blueprints and will have house pieces cut out for him to glue together next week.
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Today was a short day due to testing. The kids ran gameday #7 of the World Peace Game. They solved 3 crises and resolved our situation from last week. The original Prime Minister of the South came back and was not happy that large parts of his country had been sold off. His assistant decided that he liked being in charge, so he attempted a coup. After winning a 2/3 coin flip, he was successful and became the new Prime Minister. The old P.M. left and joined the West. There are also some awesome examples of some high level long division at work in our class today. Wednesday's class worked very hard on solving variable equations this week. They did not quite make it to solving the Master Level puzzle that Tuesday's class solved, but we will give it a try again next week. They also did A LOT of work on their scale measurements and many started working on the blueprints for their buildings. Over the next couple of weeks they will be translating these into digital blueprints, so their building pieces can be cut out. Then they will attach the walls and start working on their roof. Tuesday's class spent a big chunk of the morning working on persuasive skills. These have grown increasingly important as they navigate the World Peace Game and come into more and more conflict over money and crisis management. So, if you notice them being a bit more persuasive in trying to convince you of things, then they are taking these lessons to heart and using them outside of class. They also solved several math puzzles, including being the first class to solve a Master Level Puzzle this entire school year, which includes all of my 5th grade classes. So definite congratulations on that!!!! They solved several more crises in the WPG, they are down to less than 10 with a maximum of 4 more game days. We have been playing 2 game days per class whenever possible to try and give them as much time as possible to make it back to the architecture unit to finish their houses. There was a potential solution to the sticky national problem from last week. The prime minister whose assistant wanted to leave was absent this week, so the assistant got a chance to see how he liked being in charge. One his first day in office he proved he had been putting some strategies together. He sold off a big chunk of his nation to 2 other countries, building alliances as he went. His strategy behind this was that when the prime minister returned, if the assistant still decided to leave, then there would be no military power to retaliate against him or whatever nation he joined. Needless to say this was a very creative solution, we'll see how it develops next week. 5th graders on Monday went through about 100 years of architecture history and styles; including Queen Anne, Second Empire, Stick, Shingle, and Romanesque styles. They watched videos and used screenshots, drew shapes, and labeled architectural elements to take notes on their chromebooks. They worked to solve a variety of math problems, including their second attempt as an expert level solvemoji equation. They were also introduced to the one point perspective strategy for drawing, this is one of the more difficult drawing tasks that we do in this unit. Part of that is because it requires a lot of attention to detail, but also because often students are only used to drawing things they like or they spend most of their time drawing the same types of things over and over. Wednesday's 4th graders enjoyed a change of pace with our weekly boundary breaker. Normally it requires them to think, then write or draw, outside the box - to look at a problem, situation, or statement differently. However, this week they had some manipulatives to work with. They were challenged to come up with as many ways to organize books on a bookshelf. You can see some of their creative creations in the slideshow below. They continued to work on their draft scaling measurements, most of them are now finished and on to blueprinting. I mentioned last week that they have started to notice the more complicated the building, the more work involved. Well, this week (next week if they haven't started blueprinting yet) the ones who had really simple buildings, but the buildings were very large, are discovering how much extra work goes into building huge structures. They also solved some complex variable equations. The class did a great job persevering through adversity, many of them got very stuck on the last problem. However, they pushed through, helped each other, and worked together to figure it out. 5th grade this week solved algebraic variable equations, worked on different shading strategies, and were introduced to Victorian style architecture. They also spent time working on their Minecraft treehouse build. Wednesday's 4th graders experienced the first real taste of independent designers today. They had to take the picture of their chosen building and create a draft scale of its dimensions. Measuring the length and width was the easy part, after that they had to measure distances between major features of the building, such as windows, doors, and garages. Some of them discovered very quickly that the buildings that looked the most interesting often had the most design elements, therefore making that building harder to measure. They also managed to have time to get in some quality building sketching and started to create a digital 3D version of their building in Minecraft. Tuesday's class had an extremely busy day this week catching up from benchmarks and going through 2 game sessions of the World Peace Game. They solved 4 more crises and have really developed a good understanding of the financial aspect of the game. Besides solving the 24 crises, all the nations have to end the game with more money than they started, which some classes seem to forget about as they focus on solving problems. They have started to master the ideas of international trade, instead of just looking to the World Bank or Arms Manufacturer to supply their needs, they have started to buy and sell things from each other that they need or no longer want. |