Arts are Elementary on the horizon

Hello,

Our annual visit by an artist starts next week.  The Arts are Elementary program is sponsoring a residency with local artist Judy Segal.  Fourth graders will get a chance to learn about Maine birds, learn how to paint them and then get to write poems about them.  Their finished works will then be displayed throughout HBS.  Each class will have four sessions with Judy.  Our first session is scheduled for next Monday.  Coincidentally, it is at the time that Mrs. Smith and I had planned to start switching classes, so that will get pushed back two weeks.  Volunteer opportunities are still available for this residency.  Look for an information sheet going home tomorrow.

Thank you to everyone requesting conference times.  I have twelve of twenty scheduled.  Those twelve had confirmation notices go home today.  I hope to see the other eight requests tomorrow.

We are studying averages in math.  Yesterday we worked with chips.  I'd get them to put chips in a number of piles and then would ask for the average (or mean) number of chips in each pile.  The students would redistribute the chips to make the piles even to find their answer.  Many quickly saw the correlation between averaging and dividing. 

Today we did the same activities with money, but it was much more of a struggle.  It was fascinating to see how many students focused on getting each pile to have the exact number and type of coins, rather than like totals.  For example, if I asked them to make three piles of coins: 6c, 10c and 32c, and then asked them what the average of the three piles was, they had a very difficult time finding the answer.  The day before, with regular chips that all look alike, they found the answer in no time.  They just evened out the piles.  Today they got hung up on the exact coins.  ("But I only have one quarter, I can't give each pile one quarter." or "This pile has two nickels, but those have a dime, so I've got to switch out the nickels to make it even."  Odd.  Unexpected.  Interesting.  We didn't get to as much as I thought we would as I kept simplifying the problems to get them to see that the coins didn't matter, the totals did.  They got better and better as we went.  They are quick learners.  We'll get back at it tomorrow. 

Students wrote paragraphs on other student's topic sentences today.  They are doing much better with this.  The margin laziness is still getting under my skin, but we'll fix that like we fix most things around here: consequences.  (Cue wicked laughter.)

I'm looking forward to the conferences.  Thanks for expressing to your children that education is important.  Let's keep their future possibilities as wide as possible. 

Thanks,

Steve