Tuesday In and About lab | Wednesday ART | Thursday ELC Geek Out | Friday ART |
Upcoming Events
| Volunteer Opportunities Cooking Chemistry 9:00-11:30--help us investigate chemistry through a series of cooking style lab stations. |
Students will have math, reading & spelling homework this week in addition to reviewing SSC goals on Google Classroom.
A highlight of the week was looking at how we describe matter in Tuesday's In and About. Students had 3 stations where they had to play "Guess My Matter" a 20 questions style guessing game identifying matter using what they know about physical properties. Another way to describe matter is to test its chemical properties like pH, reactivity and flammability, which helped us determine vinegar, from water from isopropyl alcohol! (Yes, we added the disclaimer that kids should not be doing these tests at home without supervision!) The final station had them examine the period table to decode information about themselves and create their own element!
Ask, what was your favorite station and why?
Talk about the mixture and solution experiment we tried.
Extend the learning by working on your Geek Out project at home.
Literacy
I do love hearing the Merlins are come up with ideas for their fantasy writing. Such creativity! In fact, sometimes the creativity is a bit overwhelming. By reading mentor texts (examples), watching short videos, modeling my own story and so many discussions, I've tried to impress upon the kids to write about what they know and keep their story simple. (All great fantasies still need to be relatable!) However, there are a lot of complex, out of this world stories being created. We've done a lot of planning and next we'll start writing our leads while we continue to develop our setting and characters.
Ask, what's the theme of your short story?
Talk about what make fantasies you love, so great.
Extend the learning to read a fantasy as a family.
6th Grade Math
Test! Kids will be working on test corrections, retake and signature as homework this week. It will be due on Friday and we'll be moving onto new content on Tuesday--area and volume of polygons with fractional or decimal dimensions. It's our last major application of fractions before we move into new content. In 7th grade, all of this work on fractions is taught/reviewed in 1 block, whereas this content has spanned 4 blocks. Just to give you a sneak peek at next year!
Ask, what was the hardest concept of Block 5?
Talk about why when you solve 7/8 divided by 1/16 you get a bigger number.
Extend the learning to look at how division and multiplication of fractions happens in the real world.
5th Grade Math
This week we'll be reviewing all of our fraction knowledge for a test Thursday and Friday. The test includes comparing, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. Wow! Review any topics you are stuck on using the review or Math Antics videos online.
Ask, what is the hardest fraction skill for you?
Talk about how dividing 5 by 1/2 is like making s'mores. (Remember - I have five bars of chocolate and each serving is 1/2 a bar. How many s'mores can I make?)
Extend the learning by doubling or halving a favorite recipe at home.