Monday PE -Studyhall before school | Tuesday -Studyhall before school | Wednesday ART -Studyhall before school -OBOB 3:30-4:15 | Thursday ELC -Studyhall before school | Friday ART -Studyhall before school |
2/15-- No School, President's Day
News of the Week
The Great Kindness Challenge continues this week. We’ve selected secret Merlin buddies—where Merlins make one another feel special. Help your child do something special for his/her buddy. A simple note does the trick! On Friday, we’ll end the week with a Friendship Feast—where we have a moment to celebrate our wonderful class! I usually provide the snacks for this, but if a child wants to contribute something I ask that it fit our school policy of healthy snacks!
Literacy
- Writing homework this week: Scholastic News paragraph and reader’s response drawing DUE 2-12
- Typing Web if these items are finished
Last week we looked at mood and tone in the small moment stories we’ve read the past few weeks. These are tricky skills easily mixed up with the emotion of the character. Tone is how the author expresses the feelings of the characters. Mood is the overall feeling of the work. We also thought about our next visit with our Jennings McCall resident and drafted some leads for this story,.
Ask your to discuss the difference between the mood and tone of
Listen to your child talk about the questions he/she plans to ask the JM resident this week.
Extend the learning by writing a small moment story as a family or identifying tone and mood in pieces you read.
Project
Last week, we enjoyed a visit from Washington Historical Society that helped us look at differences between schools from the past and present. We also continued our simulation—seems like many colonies have started to feel the pressure of individuals having differing opinions on how to best survive! Merlins also started looking at the geography of the 13 colonies.
Ask your the child what were reasons for conflicts in colonial America?
Listen to your child list the 13 colonies, do they have a mnemonic device to remember them by?
Extend the learning by researching more information about Colonial America.
6th Grade Math
We finished all the lessons for our first block on decimals. We practiced how to order decimal number amounts, how we could estimate decimal numbers to do quick mental calculations and reviewed how to add and subtract decimal numbers. On Friday we had 2 different math challenges going on: one that looked at how rounding affects real values and another that had us calculating decimal distances. We’ll discuss these challenges this week and start the second block. I don’t plan on giving our normal formal assessment because this material is review. Be sure to look for proficiency checks and review homework, as a way to gauge how well your child understands the material.
Ask your child to correctly order the following decimals: 34.01, 34.1, 34.009, 34.011
Listen to your child explain how you use compatible numbers.
Extend the learning by looking at how decimal numbers are used in your lives.
5th Grade Math- Last week, we slowed down to make sure mathematicians understood adding and subtracting mixed numbers. Subtracting mixed numbers with borrowing proved to be challenging for 5th grade and required more time. This week, we will move into decimal numbers. We will begin with an introduction to finite decimals notation and conversion from finite decimal notation to decimal fractions. Then we will look at changing a whole number to a finite decimal and what happens when we add extra zeros to the right end of a decimal. We will end this week, by exploring some special fractions as finite decimals and working to memorize them. Part of this week's homework will be practice with improper and proper fractions, operations with mixed numbers, and the standard algorithm for multiplication.
ASK YOUR CHILD to explain the definition of a finite decimal and use that and FFEF to show that 4.5 = 4.500.
LISTEN TO YOUR CHILD explain how to solve 60 4/5 - 13 7/8.
EXTEND THE LEARNING Convert this finite decimal into a simplified fraction: 0.0125