Monday PE | Tuesday O&A to Fernhill Wetlands | Wednesday Art | Thursday | Friday No School |
- 10/12 Outdoor School letters due
- 10/12 Book orders due -Shop Online: scholastic.com/readingclub -One-Time Class Activation Code: FYB2R
- 10/16 No School
- 10/22 & 10/23 Goal Setting Conferences, No School
- Call the office to sign up for your conference, students attend the conference too
Volunteer Needs
- 10/13 from 12-2:30 We need volunteers to help with our O&A to Fernhill Wetlands. You'll be overseeing a research group.
News of the Week
Homework Update
We’ll be starting spelling/vocabulary homework this week. This week everyone will have the same work because we are using it as a vocabulary study for our poetry unit. Kids will log into their Spelling City accounts, click assignments and have to complete the assignments in a particular order. They should only do what’s assigned for the day. If all spelling assignments are done in 1 day, the long-term memory may not have time to actually learn the spelling or meaning of the word.
Bridges
Bridge construction continues and most groups are nearing the end. We will use this next week to
have smaller chunks of work time, as most groups need time to assemble the different “views.” We
discussed what types of scientific questions we could ask with this project. And, why it was important
for us all to build following the same requirements…it limited our variables so we could ask scientific
questions. It was definitely a stretch for kids to think this way, so I plan to have us explore this more
in-depth this week. I may also need to have some groups come to school early or stay late to finish
their bridge in time.
Ask, what scientific questions came up in discussion that could be answered through this project?
Listen to where your child’s groups is at with the bridge project.
Extend the learning by conducting other scientific experiments.
Literacy
In writing, we delved deep into our poetry study. I enjoyed doing chain poems, catalog poems and
free verse with the Merlins. Our Americorps member, Jonathan came in this week too, to share his
love of poetry and had us all captivated by his knowledge of poetry. We’ll continue to write different
poems this week too.
We read quite a bit of Love that Dog, which allowed us to discuss things like inference, and when is
it okay to borrow another writer’s idea to get inspired. How much borrowing is okay before it becomes
copying or plagiarism. Great thoughts abounded. Also, a prediction came true...the main character
Jack, grew in his confidence and was proud to write his name on a poem that was posted in the class.
Ask, what poetic devices did you learn about with Jonathan?
Listen to your child tell you about what’s happened in Love that Dog.
Extend the learning by reading favorite poems or writing poems together as a family.
6th Grade Math
We’ve covered all the content for our first block! I like to end a block (unit) by doing what I call a
“math challenge.” It asks kids to apply what they’ve learned from the block to a multi-step real world
application. I ask kids to break up the problem into 4 steps: understand, plan, do, and check. I love
hearing struggles, successes and mathematical dialogue interchange between kiddos. For the test,
we’ll review on Monday and break up the test into small chunks for Tuesday and Wednesday. Part of
the test will be homework too.
Ask, how would you solve 16 – 4 x 23
3
Listen to how your child explain the difference between the Associative and Commutative Property.
Extend the learning by writing equations that require you to use order of operations. See if you all get the same answer.
5th Grade Math:
Last week, the 5th grade mathematicians began their first investigation this year. Partners are working hard at finding all the possible arrangements of 24 cubic square baseballs in equal layers. Mathematician shared strategies for finding all possible arrangements. This week, mathematicians will spend one more part of a work session to find all possible arrangements, then partners will work to create presentation posters to visually share all arrangements, each arrangement's dimensions and their thinking about how they are sure they have found them all. All students will participate in a math forum, where partners will have the floor to present and take questions on their posters. Our brief week last week pushed out pre-assessment forward. So, this week, we'll kick off the week going over scored pre-assessments and reflecting on them in order to set unit goals.
Ask reasoning for knowing that you and your partner found all the possible arrangements of 24 baseballs.
Listen to your child describe his or her strengths and goals for this unit.
Extend the learning, Discuss and draw out all the possible arrangements of 18 baseballs. How do you know?