Week 7

Weekly Greetings!

What an incredible week we had with Alan and Sally from Lime Village sharing cultural knowledge with us! The week started off with a video created for the Native Heritage Museum, that embraced the strength and survival skills of the Athabascan people. It was very well done. Then the class began making octagon drums. There was a good amount of Math integrated into the lesson, and every day the students had another step to complete their project. We will display them for the school wide cultural week during the second week of October.

The class also learned how to make birch baskets, and the different uses that people have for them both in the present and past.

In addition, the group learned how to make a survival lamp using common materials.

In-between some of the other activities, we even got to make a 16 sided drum for the class to keep.

One of the activities was to create a boat out of foil and see how many nails the boat could float. Each student established a hypothesis to see whether a high-sided boat or low-sided boat would float more nails. It turned out that a low-sided boat with a flat bottom could distribute more nail weight.

With the beautiful fall afternoons, we decided to go out and gather low bush cranberries. In just a short time, the class had gathered a gallon of berries to use in the up coming school potlatch during the October culture week.

When we got back, Alan demonstrated to way to separate leaves from the berries using a fan. He said people used to go up on a windy hill and let the leaves blow away to clean the berries.

On their last day with us, Sally worked with the girls to show them how to make a hat while Alan took the boys out for some water Science activities.

Using their thumbs to start the suction, the boys could see that once there was flow in the tube line it would flow even when holding the tube up high. Using the pipeline going over the mountains was the principle behind the lesson. Again, the students were making hypotheses and testing them.

On Thursday, we also connected with the AK Teach program that allowed us to be participants in the  Fossil of Laramidia dig in Utah. This was an on-line live event through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The class was connected with other classrooms throughout Alaska and California, while they listened to and asked questions of paleontologist Dr. Joe Sertich. The class asked some excellent questions, and we will be connecting with AK Teach again throughout the school year.  

This week, the 4th grade will be having MAP testing most of the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday. The information from the tests will help guide instruction and address any weak areas we need to work on through the next few months. Please make an effort to have your child at school and on time those days.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown