Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Class Update: March 24-28

Hello everyone!


I hope you enjoyed this past weekend! It was beautiful and showed such signs of warmer spring weather.  What happened today!?!  Our family enjoyed the outdoors as we celebrated my son’s 3rd birthday with a road rally and picnic birthday party at Cabbagetown park. 



Can you believe that there are only 2 weeks left until Spring Break?! WOW… This year has really been in fast forward. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be wrapping up Term 5.

Here are the topics we will be learning and reviewing:

In math, we have wrapped up our lessons on standard/customary units of measure. We worked on converting, adding and subtracting same and mixed units as well as solving word problems to apply those skills.  This week we have started working with area and perimeter. Students learned the ways to find both area and perimeter before they discussed formulas for each. The last thing we will study this term will be line plots.

Here are some screenshots from today's lesson:






In ELA, we are starting to research about a movement. Our class chose from a large list of movements to research. A few examples are St. Baldricks, Farm 2 School, Trees Atlanta, Humane Society, Walk and Roll to School. There are some other movements that students chose for research, so please ask your student what his/her topic is. All research will be done in class, but if you have access to books or printed resources please send those in for use.

We are working with inferencing and nonfiction/informational texts, and we are integrating reading with social studies and science this term.

Last week in Social Studies we worked on the Texas Revolution and Annexation.  This week will cover the Oregon Trail and the Gold Rush. There is a great and insightful resource that we have explored and will use as a reference for these two topics. The site is http://www.america101.us/trail/Oregontrail.html. On the left side of the page, there is a link to the Gold Rush.

In science last week we finished up our lessons about force and motion and got started with simple machines. We are studying the 6 kinds of simple machines: pulley, lever, screw, wheel & axle, inclined plane and wedge.  We are identifying them, defining them, finding them in our environment and discussing how they help make work easier.

Here are a couple of pictures from one of our 'force' science experiments last week (you may have heard your child mention 'the alka seltzer experiment')



In other news…

We are in need of highlighters, erasers, Kleenex and glue sticks! If you can send in some or purchase some for the class, we will be most grateful for the donation.

Headphones/earbuds - Please check with your student to see if they have a personal pair of earbuds. Several of the students need a new pair because their pair is broken or just needs replacing.

Explorations are this Friday from 1 - 2:30… We will signup at school tomorrow (Wednesday)!

I have not set test dates for the math, science, and social studies tests for next week. It is my hope to not need to test on next Friday, April 4th. If your student will miss some days next week, please let me know! Also, we are feverishly trying to prepare study guides for your student.

Don't forget about practicing on Compass Learning at home:


Login: your child's lunch number
Password: go

*make sure your child chooses an ELA or Math folder with a 12/13 date on it (most recent info from their winter MAP test)

Thanks for reading!  I hope you a wonderful rest of the week!!!

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