We’ve had another productive week in Upper El. We chose our books for Literature Circles. Fourth grade will read The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo and fifth grade will read Holes by Louis Sachar. The kids are excited about their books and many have already read well past the first assignment. They will be gathering twice a week to discuss their assigned pages. They will have assigned roles each week with tasks to complete before coming to Literature Circle. Assigning roles gives young readers the framework for a multi-faceted interpretation of literature. Eventually the children will spontaneously incorporate the roles into their literary discussions and when they do that, they will no longer need assigned roles.

Grammar lessons this week focused on adverbial extensions for fourth grade. They learned to take a simple sentence with a predicate and a subject, and, by asking the questions: when, why, where, and how, make the sentence more complex. The fifth grade focused on the advanced function of words. One example of this work using nouns is sorting words into the categories of plurals, possessives, common, proper, abstract, and collective. Over the next few weeks they will be working their way through similar work with adjectives, prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, and interjections.

In geometry lessons the fourths learned about the seven triangles of reality and worked on sorting triangles from our plane inset cabinet into the proper place on a grid based on the sides (equilateral, isosceles, scalene) and angles (right, acute, obtuse) of each triangle. The fifths learned about proving the equivalence of a trapezoid and a rectangle.

Continuing with our lessons on the vital functions of plants, this week we learned about the needs of the plant. We had a great discussion about the origins of the 2,500 year old theory that everything is composed of a combination of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. We discovered that, although this theory is from long ago, there is truth to it. We discussed that plants need sun (fire), air, water, and earth (minerals) to survive.

We kicked off a series of geography lessons focusing on the Work of Air with an experiment proving that air occupies space. Each student will have the opportunity over the next week to use the materials and try the experiment out for themself.

Many of the children have already been hard at work researching topics of their own choice. Today, three of them presented their research to the class. This is work they are very enthusiastic about and they will have the opportunity to continue to research topics of interest throughout the year, presenting as they are ready.

Please remind your child to wear something BLUE on Monday, September 21 to recognize and celebrate the International Day of Peace.  Blue is the universal color of peace.

We love starting our day exercising our bodies and getting the blood flowing before coming inside to meditate and write in our journals. These activities get our minds ready for learning.

This year will be full of different types of lessons in Upper Elementary. One benefit of Montessori education is that students are able to move at their own pace in math and some areas of language. One way we accomplish this is through individual lessons. Each student has at least one meeting time with me each week. During this time, I observe, evaluate, and work with them on the next step of their learning. Students also meet with me as small or large groups for lessons in geometry, biology, geography, history, and evolutionary chemistry.

This week we had small group lessons in geometry. The fourth year students learned about congruent, similar, and equivalent shapes and the fifth years learned about the relationships between lines in equivalent parallelograms and rectangles.

We also kicked off our biology and history lessons. In biology we are learning about the vital functions of plants. We started by learning about three different categories of vital functions: vegetative functions (nutrition, respiration, and circulation), functions of relationship (support, sensitivity, and movement), and the function of reproduction.

In history, our fourth year students have started learning about the Time Line of Life, a study of the changes life has gone through since it appeared on Earth. Our fifth years are learning about the Time Line of Modern Humans which is an overview of fourteen cultures of the modern human species, Homo sapiens sapiens, who lived in Europe during the last 40,000 years.

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

 

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Our first full week of school has been busy with math assessments, reviews, and lessons. We’ve been settling into our daily work cycle and have continued to spend time outside whenever possible. The children are very quickly getting used to staying a safe six feet apart while they are working, even when doing floor work. They are even able to do partner work, maintaining distance through use of their six foot measuring ribbon.

We enjoy going outside for our read aloud and writing time as well as at lunch time. We also did our morning meditation and journaling in the outdoor classroom one morning this week, before beginning our work cycle.

The children are working collaboratively in several different groups in the outdoor classroom, building structures. They have worked out a system with each other to trade branches they have collected, to add to their structures. It’s quite impressive to see them problem solve and voluntarily collaborate as they are building and trading. They are an incredible group of students and it is such a pleasure to work with them.

We have had a great first week of school! We spent a lot of time during this short week learning how to keep ourselves and each other safe and healthy. The children have adjusted amazingly well to the new routines and procedures; washing their hands before and after working, playing, and eating, and keeping a safe distance from each other when inside or when not wearing their mask outside. They’ve also adapted nicely to wearing a mask at all times inside. Their resilience is incredible.

We have spent time writing, reading, and journaling this week, as well as doing some assessments in spelling and math to determine where to start with our individualized lessons and work next week. The children enjoyed having a work cycle today and got right down to business choosing work in math, language, geometry, biology, and history.

The children have tools in the classroom to help them stay safe as they learn. They each have a six foot ribbon to stretch out beside them when doing floor work so they know where to set up their work rugs. The children learned how to wipe down a material after use and each material gets a second cleaning by me before being returned to the shelf. Whenever possible, we work outside; the children have enjoyed writing, reading, and listening to our chapter book read aloud outdoors this week. They have easy access to hand sanitizer and sanitizing hand wipes when we are outside and not able to use soap and water.

We have all really enjoyed being together with old and new friends this week. It’s great to be back at school!

We kicked off our final week of February with a birthday breakfast on Monday. Then, on Tuesday the students successfully ran another Happé Café. They not only made sales inside, but also coordinated a drive thru service at the back entrance of the school. Some of the profits from this cafe will go to support those effected by the Australian wildfires. Thanks again for supporting the students through your encouragement, and of course by purchasing baked goods and hot beverages!

We are all getting very excited for our upcoming production of Moana Jr. in May. The children will be learning their parts next week and we have already begun singing the songs together in class. If you would like to access the songs for your child to practice, please click on this link.

Although we had a slightly shorter week, we were very productive. Students had an opportunity to peruse some new books I brought in from the local library to support their informational writing. During our reading lessons we discussed nonfiction text structure. Then, the students worked in teams of two to locate information writing and narrative writing in nonfiction hybrid texts. In preparation of our plan to make a timeline of early humans, the students began their own timelines of important life events. We discussed proper scale and measurement as part of the prep work.

 

We had a short, but fun-filled week of school. On Wednesday, we visited the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, CT. The students learned about light and color through a hands on investigation titled, “Blended Lights.” They each constructed their own blended light project and tested different combinations of red, green, and blue lights. After constructing their light project they made shadow puppets to test the light combinations again. When we returned to school the children designed their Valentine’s bags and shared valentines with each other.