Monday PE | Tuesday Fernhill | Wednesday ART | Thursday | Friday ASM 9:45--Dress like your a FGCS staff member :) Mix-It-Up-Lunch* |
*3/3 -- Please pack a lunch on Friday so that your child will have food to eat when we do a Mix-It-Up-Lunch with Level 1 students. The Merlins will be eating with and then leading fun games outside with Level 1 students.
3/3-- Merlins are presenting for the ASM this week.
3/10 -- Fantasy rough draft due
Project
This week the Merlins enjoyed engineering solar ovens as we learn about how the sun appears to travel through our sky. We also read about how time zones are associated with sun's movement of east to west.
Ask your student to explain why we are in a different time zone then parts of Idaho which are closer to us than places in southern California.
Listen to your child explain the solar oven project.
Extend the learning by finding other solar powered projects.
Literacy
Last week we focused on writing our rising actions scenes, especially looking at our paragraphing and incorporating as many good traits of writing as possible. For paragraphing we can use the phrase PATS to help--if the place, action, time or speaker changes, it's time for a new paragraph. For reading, we examined our literature circle book for narrative elements to use as a mentor text for our own fantasies. I am now reading Tuck Everlasting to the class, which is a beautifully written fantasy. Be sure to ask your kiddo about what they think of this book. Please note that the rough draft of the fantasy is due March 10th. Also, this week students have spelling homework Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night.
Ask your how is your fantasy coming along?
Listen to your child read part of the fantasy to you and give him/her feedback.
Extend the learning by looking for narrative elements in books you read as a family.
6th Grade Math
It's been fun to start a new textbook this week and change up our pace. For the next few weeks we'll be looking at ratios. We looked at comparing wins to losses, different colored objects. We also reviewed coordinate planes because some ratios can be used to plot points. By Monday or Tuesday you should see your child's last test come home on area and volume with fractions. Please review successes and challenges and sign the reflection page. That will be due by Friday the 3rd.
Ask what did you learn by playing Battleship?
Listen to you child explain a geometric sequence.
Extend the learning by showcasing ratios in our everyday life.
5th Grade Math-
Multiplication and fractions, and in particular, the reasoning for the algorithm proved to be a challenge for the 5th grade mathematicians. We ended up using the majority of the week on this. At the end of the week, we spent a day reviewing the reasoning for division of a whole number by a fraction. This week, I hope to finally wrap up our fraction study. We'll begin the week with the reasoning behind division of a fraction by a whole number, leading us to division of a fraction by a fraction.
We'll spend a day or two on division with decimals and end the week with a review of the unit and the unit test.
ASK your mathematician to solve 1/3 divided by 7 and explain the reasoning using the definition of division.
LISTEN to your mathematician review fraction and decimal concepts from this unit in preparation for the test.
EXTEND the learning by looking for fractions and decimals in daily life.