I hope this week's math lessons have sparked dinnertime conversation (and I understand if it hasn't come up...what a busy time of year!). These come from Dr. Jo Boaler's (Stanford University, founder of YouCubed) Week of Inspirational Math. Each includes a short video and a lesson that helps solidify concepts brought up. Today in the HW folder, you'll see folded squares of paper, which students were prompted to fold so that they demonstrate a square that makes up 1/4 the area, a triangle that makes up 1/4, and a triangle that makes up 1/8. Because today's focus was on deep understanding over speed, we talked about taking our time and being able to convince 1) yourself 2) a friend 3) a skeptic that our model meets the given criteria. The following quote, from Fields Medal winner Laurent Schwartz, is powerful, and a reminder of the importance of understanding deeply: "I was always deeply uncertain about my own intellectual capacity. I thought I was unintelligent. And it is true that I was, and still am, rather slow. I need time to seize things because I always need to understand them fully. Towards the end of the eleventh grade, I secretly thought of myself as stupid. I worried about this for a long time. I'm still just as slow...At the end of eleventh grade, I took the measure of the situation, and came to the conclusion that rapidity doesn't have a precise relation to intelligence. What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn't really relevant."

You are likely hearing songs and lines, as Room 8 students have been enjoying reading the script and singing the songs of Gold Dust or Bust over the last couple weeks. Tomorrow we'll assign our final roles and practice for a few more days as we make our way towards the last day of third grade. We'll do our final read-through that morning. Several students have asked if their families would be able to join us for this - absolutely! This is an informal readers' theater, rather than a polished stage performance, but one that we have been enjoying and learned a lot about the gold rush from. We'll celebrate with light snacks on our way to recess that morning. (End of Year Awards 8:15, Readers' Theater to follow).

Tomorrow we'll eat our lunches together in the classroom to celebrate a year of great growth as readers - thanks to several families for providing fruit, juice, and cookies. With the amazing lunches available at school through Community Roots, we'll skip the expense and logistics of pizza pick-up.

Monday - a long day in the sun (although the forecast currently indicates we may enjoy some below-average temps) - please send your children dressed for outdoor/PE-type activities (hats, sunscreen, labeled water bottle - the final activity will likely leave kids fairly wet!).