SAGE Update 1/27/12

5th Grade

This week, the 5th graders conducted the first phase of their wet strength testing of paper towels.  This phase has students working in pairs to devise fair and accurate experiments that test the strength of each towel using 1 sq. in. ceramic tiles as the unit of measure.

At this point of our experimenting, students have created and conducted enough experiments that their work is producing quite reliable results - so much so, that even as teams create a variety of experiments to test the wet strength, their rankings of paper towels is pleasingly consistent from team to team.

Our next steps will be for each team to do a "dry run-through of their experiment for the class, and we'll take be best ideas and create one experiment for the entire class to conduct in order to determine the wet strength rankings for the towels.




ABOVE AND TO THE RIGHT:  Students at Creekside and Grand Ridge conduct their initial experiments to test the wet strength of the 4 different paper towel brands.

4th Grade

One of the considerations students need to keep in mind as they continue to develop Polyhedraville is the organization of our city. In actuality, cities usually have planners to oversee the development of their city.  To get a more developed understanding of what this entails, we spent this week learning about what city planners do, and beginning to become familiar with the City of Sammamish's Comprehensive Plan. 

Next week, we are fortunate to have Emily Arteche', a Senior Planner for the City of Sammamish, visiting our two classes to tell us about her responsibilities as a city planner, and to give us some specific examples of how the city's Comprehensive Plan influences the growth and development of the city.  The informatioin is not only quite intresting, it is ultimately pretty useful when we move into the overall design of our community.

Students study and discuss Sammamish's Comprehensive Plan vision statement as their initial investigation of the document that serves to direct the city's development.

Senior City Planner for the City of Sammamish, Emily Arteche', will be in class next week to discuss her job and to help students understand how the city's comprehensive plan serves to direct and define its development. (She's pictured here sharing with the 2010-11 Polyhedraville team at Grand Ridge.

3rd Grade
Our wonderful third graders are finalizing their Mr. Bear Memos in order to present them to their classmates next week.  We will be scoring each other using a Rubric that fits the different aspects we've been talking about all along through the entire investigation and write-up process.  It is always fun to listen to each other's write-ups, and then to hear the account of what actually happened to Mr. Bear.  Stay tuned!

SAGE Update 1/13/12

Goal Setting
In every class, we have begun the yearly process of goal setting.  In SAGE, each student is required to write at least one (2 in 5th grade) goal to work on for the next few months. The goals must come from the eight SAGE program goals that focus on helping students develop academically and intellectually as well as socially and emotionally.  For more on the program goals and objects, you can watch the curriculum night PowerPoint, here.  Be on the lookout for your child's goals over the next several weeks. 

Here's a preview of some quotes I'll be using to inspire and challenge our students as we work on writing goals.

5th Grade

Paper Towel Investigations
In 5th Grade, we're in the midst of our first round of the second phase of our paper towel testing - wet strength testing.  Teams of 2 students each are designing and conducting initial rounds of testing to determine relative strengths of each of the 4 brands of paper towels. 

Prior to the testing, each class reviewed a list of qualities of "great scientists" to see how we'd been doing to date in our quest to be good scientists ourselves. This also gave us some reminders of what we can continue to do to become better scientists as we move through the paper towel unit.   Below is Creekside's list where we put check marks beside those qualities we'd exhibited and been growing in during our absorbency testing. 

Students at Creekside preview their team's wet strength testing plan by trying it out on the school's paper towels.  One indication that our students have grown as scientists is that they are much more thoughtful about how they've designed their experiment now than when we began the unit. "Will it be a fair test?",  "Can we control the variables we said we would?", and, "Can we conduct the same exact test each time?", are all questions they are seriously considering at this stage of their work. 

Ruby Bridges
All of the 5th graders at both Grand Ridge and Creekside viewed the movie, Ruby Bridges, this week.  Ruby Bridges was one of the first black children integrated into the white schools of  New Orleans in 1960.  Written and performed in a way to portray the difficulty and injustice faced by Ruby's family, the movie is very appropriate for our 5th graders, and is a poignant reminder (introduction?) of the realities of life in the South only 50 years ago.

Our SAGE students will go a step beyond their classmates to have an indepth discussion (Socratic Seminar) of the different aspects of Ruby's life when we come back to class next week. Each year, I have found this discussion to be one of the highlights of our 5th grade SAGE year.

4th Grade
Along with our work on goal writing, 4th graders continue to  pursue their work in Polyhedraville. Their most recent work has been centered around constructing and understanding the definition of "polyhedron."  We played a game to assist us in that process. 

3rd Grade
the 3rd graders are in the final stages of their investigation into who borrowed Mr. Bear.  This phase involves creating a written memo to the Chief Investigator describing who they think borrowed Mr. Bear.  Students use a PowerPoint template to gather the information for the paragraph, and then copy that informaton into a Word memo template, where they edit and finalize their work.  In two weeks, students will present their  memos to their classmates where they will assess one anothers' work.

An example of one student's 2nd reason for who she thinks borrowed Mr. Bear.