Achieve 3000 Assigned Articles 3/9 – 3/15

“All Types of Trouble: Episode 3”

“Women Adventurers”

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Achieve 3000 Assigned Articles 3/2 – 3/8 (Classwork)

“All Types of Trouble: Episode 1”

“All Types of Trouble: Episode 2”

“Young People Learn Old Ways”

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Kamehameha the Great Class Notes link

Use this link to get to the class notes for Kamehameha the Great. If you did not get all the manaʻo from classmates, please feel free to click here and add the thoughts to your notes.

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Our Learning February 2020

This has been a busy couple of months for all of us as we prepare the haumāna for the Huakaʻi. It is a huge endeavor taking 72 students at a time on an off-island trip and planning to make the experience relevant and meaningful for them. Most of what we have been doing in January and February (and will continue to do until we leave) was to learn about Kamehameha ʻEkahi, his life, character, decision-making skills, accomplishments, and influential people in his life.

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Achieve 3000 Assigned Articles 2/24-3/1

“The Truth About Dogs” and “Manga Mania”

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Achieve 3000 Assigned Articles 1/27-2/2/20

“Drake the Drone Girl: Episode 4”

“Making Trees Sing”

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Achieve 3000 Assigned Articles 1/20-1/26/20

These articles are due by 1/26/20:

“Drake the Drone Girl: Episode 3”

“Telescopes – Bigger & Better Than Ever”

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Achieve 3000 Assigned Articles 1/7-1/19/20

“The Jolt: Episode 5”

“Otzi the Iceman”

“Drake the Drone Girl: Episode 1”

“Drake the Drone Girl: Episode 2”

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Our Learning: December 2019

The beginning of the month got away from me, but I want to update you on our month’s learning and activities.

Mākau ʻŌlelo (English Language Arts) – We are honing our reading comprehension skills and have been using the book, Save Me a Seat, as our text. The chapters are short and keep going back and forth between Ravi’s and Joe’s perspective, so it is an interesting book to use. Through the beginning chapters, we focused on details in a text and plot. We moved on to main idea and writing a summary. We are currently making inferences and drawing conclusions from the text and next week, we will be working on crafting higher level thinking questions for ourselves and an audience. Over Christmas break, the children will be asked to read Makoa and the Place of Refuge to prepare for discussions and activities when we return from break. Our collaborative research project with Papa Kūkalahale (grade 3) is going well and I will share details in the social studies section.

Makemakika (Math) – Multiplication of four-digit by one-digit and two-by-two digit numbers is on the agenda this month. Understanding the concept, practicing computation accuracy, and applying the learning to real world problems is what we are practicing. This skill is used to find perimeter and area. Many children still need to work on their basic multiplication facts through 12. Based on assessments and quizzes, they understand the concept and set up the equation and work correctly, but end up with the incorrect solution due to calculation errors (ex: 6 x 5 = 35). Please take the break to practice multiplication (and fact families).

Pilikanaka (Social Studies) – Cross grade level student teams are working together to research and create a presentation to share learning with the rest of the class. The project is called Ka ʻIkena a ka Hawaiʻi and it is an interdisciplinary unit (language arts and social studies). The focus question for research is: “How did Hawaiians live and think in early Hawaiʻi?” Stage one involved researching and determining important information from a text. Stage two is putting information from different researchers and sources together. Stage three is planning and creating a presentation to share learning to an audience, and stage four is sharing the presentation. The focus question for this part of the project is, “How do we create an informative, engaging, and accurate presentation to effectively communicate what we learned.” The students need to make relevant connections and explain how traditional early Hawaiian ways of living and thinking might be applied in our lives today. The presentations are scheduled to be shared on January 8, 2020. It has been a good learning experience to work with 3rd grade research partners.

It is a pleasure spending each day with your child and I want to wish your entire ʻohana a very Merry and blessed Christmas. I hope you will use the much-needed break to spend time together laughing, learning, loving each other, and having fun. Family is so important and I am grateful for the opportunity to have ʻohana time to rejuvenate, celebrate Jesus’ birthday, and welcome 2020! Mele Kalikimaka!!

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Our Learning: November 2019

Time is passing so quickly. I appreciate your time coming to the conference and hope you are proud of your child for the work he/she is putting into his/her learning. While a few could put forth better effort and strive for more than the minimum, I am excited to see the enthusiasm the students have for learning. As we approach Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the opportunity to get to know your children this year and spend time with them as they learn and grow.

Mākau ʻŌlelo (Language Arts) – We are in the midst of the novel, “Save Me a Seat” and are using this text to help students improve reading comprehension through inferencing and drawing conclusions. We are also learning how to craft higher level thinking questions. For writing, we are looking at the qualities of writing used on our grade level rubric and are practicing techniques to improve writing skills. Our current focus areas are clarity, purpose, voice, and structure.

Makemakika (Math) – Addition and subtraction are concepts that many have mastered and we will be moving into multiplication and division. There are students who understand the concepts, but still need to practice subtraction regrouping with zero. I have noticed that quite a few students do not have their multiplication facts through 12 committed to memory. This will cause some struggle as we move into multiplication, division, and especially fractions, so continued practice and mastery of these facts is critical to our next unit. We don’t have time to work on multiplication math facts in class, so support from home will greatly benefit your child and would be appreciated. Suggestions for practice were shared with the children.

Pilikanaka (Social Studies) – We have learned quite a bit about ahupuaʻa and early Hawaiʻi through class, a guest speaker, and learning journeys (field trips). We will wrap up the unit with a joint research project between a grade 3 and grade 4 class (our class and Mrs. Raletta’s class). We plan to begin the project the week of Nov 18 and finish before the end of the semester. Students will discover more about life in early Hawaiʻi.

I am working to get photos of activities and learning journeys uploaded for you to view. I haven’t decided on the best format yet, but am trying to keep the photos private and not upload them to the blog. I am thinking of putting them in folders in Google Photos and sharing the links with you, but will keep you posted when we figure out the best way to share them with you.

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