Monday Studyhall before & after school PE | Tuesday Studyhall before school ELC Buddies | Wednesday Studyhall before & after school Art | Thursday Studyhall before school Presentation | Friday Studyhall before school Art |
- 10/27 Kids needs to bring a picture book from home to read to their ELC buddy on 10/28. (I have spare books if needed.)
Volunteer Needs
- 11/3 I am looking for volunteers to go Nana Cardoons with us!
News of the Week
Conference Wrap Up
Thanks for all the great Goal Setting Conferences last week. I enjoy hearing kids pick their focus areas for the year. I am working on taking our notes from the conference and creating a document that families can easily refer to at home. Kids will get one too, for their binder. Be on the look out for these documents later in the week.
Project: Bridges & Systems: Nature and Design
The Bridge Bust was a huge success, especially in terms of learning from our mistakes in design. We’ll do some graphing of our results to see if there is a relationship between any of the variables we chose to study and how much weight the bridges were able to hold. We also dipped our toes into our next unit, Systems: Nature and Design unit. We looked at the word “biomimicry” and how this is inspiring new inventions.
Ask, what do you think led to the strongest bridge?
Listen to how your child’s meeting went with the Fernhill scientists.
Extend the learning by researching inventions inspired using biomimicry.
Literacy
- We’ll be going to the ELC at Pacific this week for our first week of Buddy Reading.
- Kids will be asked to bring in a favorite picture book from home to share with their buddy. I have books in the classroom, if a student needs to borrow one.
- We are doing a vocabulary study this week on Spelling City for our writing homework.
Although it was a short week in writing, we wrote metaphor, alliteration and concrete poems. Kids
were surprised to see how many elements of poetry are in current pop songs they love! We’ll still be writing poems this week. Kerry, the student teacher, will lead the class through a powerful poem called “I am From.” It has kids look at significant memories and images that come to mind when they think of who they are.
I started to read aloud Hate That Cat, the sequel to Love That Dog. It’s another great book, written in the narrative poetry form. We talked about the importance of asking questions, making
predictions and connections while we read. This week we’ll start our first formal reader’s response on
vocabulary—and tuning into interesting words.
Ask, why doesn’t Jack want a cat in Hate That Cat?
Listen to your child talk about what types of poems he/she has enjoyed writing.
Extend the learning by reading favorite poems or writing poems together as a family.
6th Grade Math
Sixth graders will need to get their tests signed by their parents and returned to me by Friday,
at the latest. Most everyone finished their corrections and retakes in class last week. This week,
we’ll start our 2nd Block, called Algebraic Expressions. They’ll have an assignment to complete each
night this week.
Ask, later in the week, “What’s an expression?”
Listen to how your child explain the first test to you.
Extend the learning by writing expressions that apply to your life.
5th Grade Math
This week, the 5th grade mathematicians will complete a second math forum around the How Much Cardboard investigation. Students will complete their first work sample of the year to show their understanding of volume and surface area. We'll also spend some time analyzing the Multiple Game and thinking about prime and composite numbers.
Ask, your child to describe his or her strategies for calculating how much cardboard each box would take.
Listen to your child define prime and composite numbers and give examples of each.
Extend the Learning by finding the surface area of some household items together.