Blue Cluster (Grades 4-5)

Welcome to Blue Cluster from Imani Smith & Lillian Peralta Alba

The Theme of Blue Cluster: Patterns of Change

The students in Blue Cluster learn the importance of being part of a community and responsibility to each other. Using the theme Patterns of Change we describe, analyze and find patterns in what we see is happening in the world around us. We look for these patterns in the literature we read and the historical concepts that we study. We learn to understand the patterns we find there so that we can make sense and connections from the past in order to predict future patterns.

Blue Cluster stresses independence, work quality and time management skills as students study our environment and our state’s and country’s history through simulations. Our curriculum encourages children to make appropriate choices, both academically and interpersonally. Students participate in whole group, small group, interest groups and cooperative group lessons. They learn to analyze, infer and make judgements as they write from a character’s perspective that they have studied in literature. Students learn to look at the world like a poet rather than a scientist in our Writer’s Workshop where we teach our students to show and not tell in their writing. They learn to write from the heart rather then writing a grocery list of ideas. Using technology, the students are encouraged to reach beyond the walls of the classroom to gain insight and knowledge from the sources this media makes available to them and they also learn to incorporate their math skills such as algebra, statistics and physics as they create simulations in the computer program Squeak. The students learn the many possibilities to problem solving in scientific situations and mathematical ones.