Carving pumpkins!

For many of our students, they've carved pumpkins their whole lives. But for some of our students who are new to America, they've never carved a pumpkin before. So recently some of our teachers set out to create this experience for these students.

This was the first Jack-O-Lantern for many of our ESOL (English as a Second or Other Language) students. 

Students created designs for faces on paper and on computer. Then, they worked together to prepare the pumpkin and carve the winning face.

One of the favorite quotes from that day was:  "This is SO gross! ... Let me get my hands back in there!"

Check out their pumpkins and excitement in these photos below. 

 

Math is fun in any language

Baker-Butler is an exciting and growing community of students from all around the country and the world. 

Our students frequently have the opportunity to interact with their peers who have lived in Charlottesville their whole lives and others who have lived in multiple states and countries before moving here. 

One of the many benefits of these student interactions are the connections that students make on common themes or topics when viewed from different perspectives, backgrounds, cultures, and even languages. 

Recently two of our fourth graders made common connections with math in their different languages. One of our students, who speaks German and English, made a connection with a peer who speaks Farsi and English. As the teacher shared, the student who speaks German and English "excitedly

showed me her whiteboard during morning work time when kids were assigned to play a multiplication dice game with partners. The directions were to use the dice to roll two 2-digit numbers to create a multiplication problem. They were to use the box method of multiplication, also known as the area model, to demonstrate their solutions. The two students then wrote the numbers 1-10 in Farsi along the top of their board, then completed their work with their "new numbers."

Check it out!