Updates from Quartz
Adventures in Quartz
These past two weeks, for our 8-10 year olds, have included a journey through geology, coding, measuring, dividing, noticing messages in books, word games. Here’s what they’ve been up to:
Ways to test the properties of rocks.
Last Thursday, Quartz & Citrine bands took a trip to California Academy of Sciences to participate in the immersive geological engineering program. They learned about a potential Public Utilities Commission project to build a new water recycling plant and assessed the ground rock of each of the sites. Students learned how to do a scratch test to test how hard the rock was. They also used a microscope to observe the grain patterns and textures on the rock. They also learned about erosion by measuring distance on a map of their site options in 1950 and today and modeling erosion in a tub. At the end of the lesson students shared their findings and concluded whether their site would be appropriate for this project or not.
Learning about the different types of rocks and how they are formed
Last week we learned about how different kinds of rocks are formed in the rock cycle by watching videos, looking closely at rocks using microscopes, and playing a rock cycle game. We practiced using evidence for our theories by giving examples of how our test rocks matched certain properties of rocks.
Word games
This and last week in word study we continued to explore the patterns of doubling, using trans, sub, and inter as prefixes, and the long o sound in three small groups. We played sorting and spelling games to practice choosing what pattern to use in a specific situation.
Learning paragraphing and writing past the climax in our stories
Students are working on completing their fiction narrative work. This week we talked about how paragraphing both helps us keep our work organized for a reader and helps us notice where a paragraph needs more elaboration.
Learning about remainders
In math we’ve extended our division student to situations with leftovers (a.k.a. remainders). This has helped students further their conceptual understanding of division as both relating to situations with sharing, grouping, and relating to the inverse of multiplication. We’ve done this work through story problems, games, and sharing our thinking.
Looking at patterns now that we’ve learned all the multiplication facts
Last week we learned our final single digit multiplication facts by learning the 9s facts! We filled in all the facts to talk about patterns across and within each “house” (set of facts).
Building multiple editions by planning the pattern first
The building group has moved from pitching individual ideas to combining the ideas into one design and making a pattern so it’s easier to mass produce the arcade housings. This work has required careful measurement of side lengths and angles and careful tracing to get identical cuts.
Finding mistakes in our code
The coding team has also realized the importance of precision in their work. They realized if you have a piece of code that contradicts another piece of code neither block will work. They’ve been helping each other carefully comb through their work to find and fix mistakes.
Indian No More
Another part of our days has been listening to Indian No More for our read aloud. A major theme in the book has been making sense of the stereotypes and messages we get in the media and how those stories impact the way we see the world and other cultures. The main character of the book is frustrated that her neighbors want to play Cowboys and Indians in a way where the Indians always lose. The book has helped us illuminate the importance of thinking about why we frame our play in certain ways and the value of being a critical consumer of stories be it TV, movies, video games, or word of mouth because stories carry power.
~Thank you Mary Catherine for bringing all of this goodness to the Brightworks community!