Winter Break

Happy Holidays to all! Have a safe, restful and fun break!

This week has largely been spent catching up before student go off to break and forget everything they worked so hard to learn.

In Science, Students spent this week learning about the flowers and the bees.  Literally.  Specifically they are reading about pollination and dissecting flowers.

In math, students are retaking tests and finishing ChOWs as needed.  Make sure your student checks the source over break to see that he or she is caught up.

Language Arts:  We learned that Theme was the main idea or moral of a story or piece.  It is rarely explicitly stated and must be inferred by the reader.

Social Studies: Students finished their Egypt essays, bibliographies, and visual projects.

News of the week

Your student should be bringing in more WEP forms.  The permission slip your student received on Friday is due this Friday.

There are no Post-its due due this week.

Social Studies: We are finishing our Egypt Essays and starting to bring in materials for our visuals.

Science: Test Thursday

Math: Chow 12

Vocabulary

In Language Arts students are working on getting vocabulary words out of text they are reading.  Building vocabulary is a key skill.  I find the hardest part for students is admitting that they don't know what a word means.  They tend to blow through the reading and say "I didn't find any words that I didn't know."  Usually with some prodding, it becomes apparent that there are plenty of words students (and adults) can't easily define or fully understand.  This is also a chance to explore why English has so many words that mean similar things.

What is the difference between saying huge or saying colossal?  The words we choose to use while speaking and writing say more about us that the topics we're sharing.

Welcome back from Thanksgiving Break

Now that we've all had our fair share of food and family, it's back to work!

In Social Studies, students are continuing to work on Egypt research.  They are now begining to cite their sources with a bibliography.

Language Arts: students are getting back into reading after a long stint of writing.  Due this Friday is 4 character annotations (post-it notes) and 210 minutes of reading.

Science is finishing the roots and shoot lab by compiling their data and drawing scientific conclusions.

Mathematicians are working on ChOW 11 and finding way to find Least Common Multiples and Greatest Common Factors*.

*Edited 3 December: Thanks to T.S. for pointing out that I had multiple and factor backwards!