Garden Math

Hi Room 203 families,

This week our class received a special "letter" from the White House asking for us to help design new garden beds. The garden beds could be designed in many different ways but each bed had to be partitioned into four equal shares (the president just so happened to know that we are currently studying fractions.) Students finished their designs and I'm so impressed! 

Don't forget, tomorrow is an early release day and there is no school this Friday! An email will be sent out soon with a class list for Valentines. 

Thank you so much for all you do,

Ms. Wertheim 

Fraction Fun at Paxton's Pizzeria

Hi Room 203 families,

Today we began studying fractions! To help introduce this topic we turned our classroom into Paxton's Pizzeria. Paxton's Pizzeria is known for producing quality pizza with all the best toppings, made by chefs who are attentive, responsible, thoughtful, and safe. 

First, Chef Ben answered the phone as customers called in to place their orders:

Next, it was time to fulfil the orders! Would the customer want their pizza partitioned into halves, thirds, or fourths? What toppings would they want? These chefs worked hard to make sure that all orders were correct! 

I hope Paxton Pizzeria chefs are ready to fulfil more orders tomorrow! ;)

Have a great evening,

Ms. Wertheim 

Super Science

Hi Room 203 families, I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend! I wanted to share some photos from our Super Science Day on Friday. We started out our morning by exploring states of matter: solids, liquids, and gases. Students practiced using their science notebooks to record observations at each station. They loved it! 

In the afternoon, we took a trip to the Media Center to participate in our first STEAM lesson of the year! STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. In this lesson students explored different careers in STEAM (including architecture, marine engineering, aerospace engineering, culinary arts, fashion design, video game design and car design). Then they discussed the importance of teamwork in all the careers, remembering that "you can't have STEAM without TEAM." 

Finally, the kids worked in teams of three to design and build "tall towers" using only toothpicks, spaghetti, and gumdrops. Their only rule was that it had to be free-standing. They worked completely as a team with no adult help. It was incredible to see what they came up with! 

This is a lesson we'd all love to do again! :)

Until next time,