Monday P.E. | Tuesday In and About: More Symposium Work | Wednesday Art | Thursday Sustainability Symposium | Friday Art Early Dismissal @ 1:05 |
Calendar Highlights
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Great Job at All School Meeting Last Week, Merlins! Bravo!
Announcements
Greetings Merlin Families! Our sustainability symposium is this week! It will be held from 12:50 to 3:00 with our usual break from 1:50 to 2:10. This will take place in the level 3 classrooms in a science fair format. Students will be presenting their sustainability project and families are invited to see what they have created. In other news, next week is our last week before break. This means that students are finishing up several projects including Council of All Beings Essay, Nature Adventure Literature Packets, Sustainability Symposium Projects, and any math work/test retakes that may need to be completed. If students are behind on any of these assignments, they will work on these for homework rather than sticking to their normal homework routine. If this is the case for your student, they should have the change written in their agendas. We will also not have spelling this week. Instead, your student should spend 15 - 20 minutes reviewing and proofreading their Council of All Beings Essay. Please let us know if you need a physical copy of this for your student to take home.
Literacy
Last week, Merlins wrapped up their Nature Adventure Books and finished the last section of their literature circle packet. They found concrete evidence for how their character has grown and developed over the course of the story, and used these to write a paragraph on the theme of the book. Next week, we will put finishing touches on these packets and have our last literature circle meetings.
During our writing time last week, Merlins worked on putting sentences into a rough draft of their Council of All Beings Essay. They took the perspectives of their beings and worked to make a case for the protection of their way of life. This week, we will turn our focus toward polishing (*secret word*) these essays and making them presentable. We do not have spelling this week, and that gives your student the opportunity to spend some extra time on spiffing up their Council of All Beings Essay!
Ask: Which paragraph was your favorite to write?
Extend the Learning: Have your student read their essay aloud to you, ask them what they notice. Read it back to them (making sure to only pause when they have added punctuation that creates pause) then ask what else they notice.
Project
Last week, instead of having an out and about or in and about, we spent our project time preparing our presentations for the sustainability symposium this week. Throughout the fall, as we studied systems, we tried to think of ways in which the food, farm, water, forest, power, and transportation systems in Forest Grove could be improved by identifying problems and coming up with questions to guide us to a solution. We took problems like “Healthy foods like organic produce are more expensive per serving than unhealthy foods like chips and cookies.” and came up with questions like “How might we help people afford fresh produce?” We then took these ‘How might we…’ questions and found ways that we could answer them to solve problems in our systems. Some students worked in pairs while others worked individually to create presentations on their ideas to explain why their idea is sustainable economically, environmentally, and socially. We would love families to come see what students made at our symposium this week.
5th Grade Math
This week, 5th graders extended their decimal skills and practiced modeling decimal numbers on base 10 grids. They also became more comfortable with the idea that decimals are fractions, and fractions are decimals. 5th grade mathematicians were able to practice this idea as they modeled decimals and wrote them as both a decimal number and fractions. As we moved further into decimals, students began comparing decimal numbers as they built their understanding of place value. We ended the week with an introduction of rounding to the nearest tenth, hundredth, thousandth.
Ask: How can we round 1.086 to the nearest tenth? What would our answer be? Is 1.10 greater, equal to, or less than 1.01?
6th Grade Math
Last week in math, we reviewed some concepts from block 3 that were challenging for many students. We also spent some time making corrections and finishing up test retakes for block 3 (Block 4 for independent group). We will continue our dive into block 4 next week. Please Note: for homework in block 4, I am going to ask students to try something a little different. I am going to ask them to start doing problems from the textbook. This will make it easier for them to un-stick themselves if they feel stuck on a problem (by reviewing the chapter notes), and give them the chance to check their work in the back of the book if they need to. Another thing to note (that I will remind them of in class) is that they only need to do the odd problems in a given page range. So if their agenda says problems 1-30, please note that this means that they only need to do 15 problems: all the odd numbered problems between 1 and 30. All this to say, please encourage your student to bring their textbook home every night and back to school every morning, they will need it both in class and at home. Another note, I will be sending a small pile of papers home for you to sign, I only need the reflection page back, you are welcome to keep the tests themselves.
Ask: What was challenging about this last test? What did you write on your block 3 (4) test review? How can you change fractions so that they both have the same denominator?