Math
On Wednesday students got to explore three different math centers in a math “exploration.” In Center One, they balanced different items using a pan balance. How many pennies does it take to balance two dice? How many to balance five golf pencils? In Center Two, students worked together to estimate how many sheets of paper would cover a tabletop. You surely be interested in this site. Next, they were given larger sheets of paper and asked to estimate again. Would it take more sheets? Or fewer? In Center Three, students were given ten minutes to count a daunting pile of pennies. They had to work together to decide how to get an accurate count. Group by fives? By tens? Count each one individually? We made a lot of new discoveries!

Reading Workshop
This week, we kicked off a brand new nonfiction reading unit that coincides with our Polar Regions study in social studies. Students reviewed how to preview a text and spent the rest of the week looking closely at text features like photographs, maps, captions, diagrams, and more. Our young readers will be reading a variety of nonfiction texts, including a lot of content-area reading about the polar regions of our earth.

Charleston Symphony Performance
Cooper School students had the privilege of hearing a Charleston Symphony Orchestra string quartet perform for them on Friday. Our First Graders were in awe of the performers and the students were clearly able to connect the hard work they do in music and choir every week with the mastery with which the performers played. Ms. Hazel does such an amazing job of introducing them to classical music in class that our students recognized some of the pieces that the string quartet played for us!

Important Dates
•   Monday, January 23 – Study Trip to Charleston Stage
•   Friday, January 27 – Art Walk, 8:00am
•   Friday, February 3 – Opinion Writing Publishing Party, 2:00pm
•   Tuesday, February 7 – Parent Coffee, 8:15-9:15am