It was another great week in Level 3 as we settled into our routines and enjoyed some colder weather! Keep reading for level 3 announcements, an overview of our learning for the previous week and a preview of next week!
Announcements
- Next Friday, October 8th, is a Staff Development Day- this means no school for students.
- To support a project about the nature principle “nature runs on sunlight” and engineering design, we would like to have students create bean mazes next week. To help with this, we would really appreciate it if you could send any extra boxes that you have around your home with dimensions that are less than a foot in all directions- think cereal box size or the size of many of the Amazon Prime boxes.
- After there were some issues with Pokémon cards last week, we are going to make a switch to a “no Pokémon cards at school” policy.
Project
In project last week, we focused our systems learning on the nature principle “Nature recycles everything”. To support this learning, we learned about decomposers (*secret word* → write this in your agenda for bonus points!) and the soil nutrient cycle. We also created slides that synthesized their learning about each of our nature principles: events often lead to unintended consequences, nature runs on sunlight, and nature recycles everything. Our Out and About last week further supported our thinking about food systems through considering the “food miles” that a locally sourced vs. non locally sourced meal would travel. During our O&A students tried an apple grown in the school garden and an apple that was purchased from the grocery store.
Ask your student about how these apples compared!
In project next week, we will be reflecting on and deepening our systems learning thus far. We will continue exploring our nature principals (especially nature runs on sunlight) by creating bean mazes. During our Out and About next week, students will be utilizing systems thinking to consider some of the unintended consequences of pest management on farming.
Literacy
Last week, we completed our first read of Love that Dog. With this, we reflected on how the main character’s feelings about poetry changed throughout the book in combination with our own feelings about poetry. Students also continued to write poetry in the style of famous poets that were mentioned in the book. We also discussed the difference between summarizing a section of a book and the book in its entirety.
Ask your student to share a summary of Love that Dog with you!
Next week in literacy, students will be in small groups rereading Love that Dog. As students reread the book, we will be taking a deeper dive to think about the themes of the book. We will also be practicing engaging in small group book discussions. Our poetry writing thus far has been largely inspired by famous poets. This week, students will be getting their own writer’s notebooks and will be writing poems in this using their own poetic voice.
5th Grade Math
In 5th grade math last week, we worked on comparing decimal numbers using <,> and = notation and well as rounding decimal numbers. At the end of the week, we began reviewing our decimal learning thus far. To support our review, students logged into the Great Minds online student portal (https://digital.greatminds.org/) that supports our math curriculum. Students log into this using the Google Account Login. With this, students are able to watch videos and complete problems alongside the videos to review what we have learned in class.
Have your student show you this website!
Next week, fifth graders will continue reviewing, take a mid module assessment, then engage in some math activities and games that support fifth grade math standards.
6th Grade Math
In 6th grade math last week, students continued learning about ratios. To support this learning, students wrote their own story problem involving ratios. Sixth grade students are using the Great Minds online student portal (https://digital.greatminds.org/) as well.
Have your student show you this website!
Next week, we will continue to explore ratios and dig deeper into equivalent ratios and ratio simplification.