The Dip

Today we finished our second round of analogy Jumpstarts for our morning warm-up.

We touched back on finding the area of irregular shapes in math.  Students are getting more comfortable with subdividing and using their formula to calculate square units.  They did really well on our challenge problem and finding lengths based on other given measurements.

A big part of our day was spent playing some logic and persistence games.  We watched a video about a student experiencing "the dip" or a struggle in their learning journey.  We discussed ways to overcome "the dip" and viewing it as a natural part of learning.  To simulate a dip we worked on the surprisingly hard four piece T puzzle and reflected on our feelings as we struggled to try different strategies and find the correct configuration.  We also challenged ourselves with the Set puzzle and a round of Mastermind.

Students finished up their work on the Chapters 1 & 2 pieces of their medieval times projects.  Next time we will be looking at protecting the castle and castle life.

Geometry All Around Us

Today our Jumpstart had us back on bridge sentences for analogies.  We are looking at types of relationships and considered opposites, degree, functions, type, and lack.  One more week and we may have a class of analogy masters!

Our Jacob's Latter reading for today was Geometry All Around Us.  Students use the text to help them list detailed examples from the story and their own experience.  They then classified their examples and drew generalizations about the role of geometry in everyday life.

We kept on with the geometry theme as we headed to math and looked at deconstructing irregular shapes.  We rearranged our area pieces back into regular shapes and students were able to use their measurement and formula knowledge to determine the area.

We all passed our chess test with flying colors and continued our castle construction.  Most of us got a jump on our first project choice option as well.

Castle Construction

Today we began with round 2 of our Jumpstart cycle, focusing on different types of analogy relationships.  Students substituted their pairs into bridge sentences to check the relationship for consistency.
In math we continued with area where students discovered that figures with the same area can have a very different shape. They were able to find as many different ways as possible to draw an irregular shape with an area of 7 square centimeters on grid paper.  We then worked on subdividing those figures into rectangles and squares and writing number sentences using L x W to show each part's area.

For our Mindset Moment, students watched a short video where they were introduced to Mojo and his discovery about what challenges can do for his brain.
We were excited to begin part 2 of our Medieval Times project today.  Students broke  ground on our book study of Knights and Castles by Mary Pope Osborne, completed a Medieval timeline, and started construction on their lapbook castles!