Rebels and Redcoats – The Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness on American Soil
“We the Kids of the Akers Crew, in order to form a more perfect crew, establish integrity, honesty and fairness, insure kindness and respect, provide for the common learning experiences, promote the SIERRA NORMS, and secure the blessings of education to ourselves, and our community, do ordain this constitution for M7, The Akers Crew.”
-Created by the Akers Crew on September 2, 2016. Designed with guidance from the Preamble of the US Constitution.

We are off to a great start to our 2016-17 school year! The crew is merging together beautifully and we have enjoyed team-building games, created our own crew constitution (see above), learned about Ben Franklin’s Maxims and how they relate to our SIERRA NORMS. That was just in the first two days!

Expedition:
Our first case study is Colony Vs. King and the students will learn about the establishment of the 13 colonies. Learning targets include: The students can describe the similarities and differences of the 13 original colonies and students can investigate the political, social, religious, and economic motivations that lead to the revolutionary war. We will dance every Friday with the Brisbin Crew as we learn about social dancing during the colonial times. George Washington loved to dance minuets and we will learn some of those minuet dances! Our first overnight will take us to Independence Lake where we will draw colors to create a red (Redcoats) and blue (Rebel) team. We will have team building games to simulate battles between the rebels and redcoats. It will be great fun as we play games and learn about the Colonies. We will have a service-learning component to this overnight as well. Thank you to parent volunteers, who have already started to plan for this fieldwork!

We will also have two fieldwork days to the Verdi Stables to experience how the colonist traveled back in the colonial days-by horseback! We will have one date in September and in October.

Questions to ask your child:
1. Who are and what is the difference between the Redcoats and Rebels?
2. Who is King George and why did the British decide to leave to start a new life?
3. Sing the 13 Colonies song!
4. Why is Ben Franklin such an important leader in our studies of the American Revolution?
5. Why are you reading Ben and Me as the kick off to your Redcoats and Rebels expedition?
6. Describe the 4 Mystery primary documents you analyzed. What were they, and why are they important?
7. Who was John Allan, and why was he important in your studies?
8. What would you do if you were faced with the issues the British faced when under King George’s rule?

Reading:
We’ve been reading Ben and Me. I can say students are all so surprised by Benjamin Franklin’s words, experiments and inventions! We have used the learning targets: I can create a personal collection of maxims based on reflection and goal setting. And I can compare and contrast the SIERRA norms and Ben Franklin’s 13 virtues to determine the importance of fostering character. Maxims are starting to cover our walls in our room!

Writing:
This week we started our Writer’s Workshop time – I have had so many request to have writing time during the first week of school! They can’t wait to dive back into their stories. We will have writing mini lessons every week to cover the many aspects of writing as well as ELA time where we will cover the writing conventions such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar. Our first writing piece tied to our expedition will be a historical fiction narrative and the students will be guided through the writing piece with graphic organizers, informational text and hands on learning activities. Today we started building background knowledge and practicing inferring with an activity that used four mystery documents about the colonial times. The students worked both independently and collaborate as they took notes through an “I notice and I wonder” graphic organizer. It is activities like these that will help them understand and create an original informational writing piece.

Math:
Both math groups are already into the first unit of Bridges. The 4th graders will work on methods and models for multiplication and division, learn about composite and prime numbers, build arrays for multiplication and division problems and use perseverance to solve math problems. They are trying to beat their own time in daily mad minutes as well as use a spiral math practice sheet, which covers many standards, then on Fridays, they will have a short quiz over what was covered on the daily pages. We will also get the students set up of Front Row to take a math assessment and start practicing at their own math levels.

5th grade students are learning about multiplication through factor pairs 1-100, and multiplicative relationships. In Unit 1, an exploration of volume serves as a bridge between fourth and 5th grade. Working with volume provides the context in which students review and extend skills and concepts from fourth grade, while introducing skills and concepts that are central to this year’s studies. In this unit, students are exposed many strategies for multiplication. In repeating these strategies through spiraling throughout the year student will become proficient in volume concepts.

Thank You!
Thank you to all the parents who attended Back to School Night, I truly appreciate you coming in and helping your child have a great kick off to their school year. Our crew is so amazing; they are kind, polite, funny and inquisitive. I am so looking forward to an incredible school year!

Kindly,
Lynn