Monday PE | Tuesday In and About | Wednesday ART | Thursday ELC | Friday ASM--Crazy Hair Day |
January 13 --All School Meeting, Crazy Hair Spirit Day
January 16 (MLK Jr.) NO School
January 17 OMSI trip (I've got enough volunteers, thanks!)
January 26-27 (end of semester work days) NO School
Weekly News
Having the class all together again, certainly was nice! It's a good time to reset and make sure we remember our expectations. To add to that, I have been wanting to have students be more mindful. A simple way to define mindfulness is to notice what is happenining right now. Mindfulness is taking notice of how your body feels and what you see, smell and taste. Maybe you even feel emotions in your body, perhaps through a tightness somewhere, or a good sensation. Mindfulness is also noticing what your mind is doing. My hope is that devoting time to mindfulness students can understand how to better deal with how they are feeling and enjoy more of the present moment.
Literacy
We are a little half way through our first fantasy literature circle book. Last week we looked at characterization, in other words, how the author lets us get to know the characters. Writers have direct and indirect ways of characterization. A direct way is to specifically say, "He was mad he lost his book." An indirect way would be, "He let out of a huff, crossed his arms after frantically searching his room for his favorite book." I hope taking time to study characertization will help students build better characters for their own fantasy, which we will start doing this week. Last week we started our first practice spelling unit--we looked at words that end "ice."
Ask, give an example of indirect characerization.
Listen to your student discuss what his/her main character is like in their literature circle book.
Extend the learning by talking about how TV shows, movies or other books achieve characterization.
*Writing homework will take the form of spelling practice and brainstorming for their fantasy. Be sure to check the agenda or webpage.
6th Grade Math
Sixth graders worked on two concepts last week, testing their understanding of adding and subtracting mixed numbers and learning the concepts behind multiplying of fractions. I will be working with students who didn't show proficiency on adding and subtracting mixed numbers, so test won't be coming home this week. We'll continue with multiplying and dividing fractions this week.
Ask, how did the test on adding and subtracting fractions feel to you?
Listen to your child describe how the area model of multiplying fractions works.
Extend the learning by showing examples of multiplying and dividing fractions in your daily life.
5th Grade Math
This past week, the 5th Grade mathematicians worked hard to review decimal concepts we began before winter break - decimal notation and decimal fractions, adding and subtracting decimal numbers and expanded form of decimal numbers. Towards the end of the week, 5th graders learned the reasoning behind comparing decimal numbers using greater than, less than and equal to and began investigating the mathematical reasoning and algorithm for rounding decimal numbers to the nearest whole, tenth and hundredth place. We will continue with rounding decimals and strengthening decimal place value understanding this week.
ASK your mathematician to explain the reasoning (using a number line) and the algorithm ( the steps) to round decimal numbers to the nearest hundredth using 4.276.
LISTEN to your mathematician tell you the algorithm steps to add or subtract decimals numbers and show with this equation 7.4 - 0. 483.
EXTEND the learning by looking for decimals used in everyday life.