April 28

We had a long week as we continue making up our snow days, what a crazy winter we had. This Saturday will be the last Make up day of the year. We will be watching Holes (and comparing/contrasting the two) and doing some case 21 testing breakdowns. Friendly reminder that it is PG. I had sent out a note about that earlier, stating that I needed permission, and that lack of a response would signify you were fine with your child watching the movie. If you do not want your child watching it, feel free to let me know and they can go to a different classroom while we watch the movie.

Looking ahead....EOGs are May 20-21. Your child's homework may look a little different over the next few weeks as we prepare for testing. We are focusing in various test taking strategies in the classroom too.

In language arts we are delving into various types of literature as we look at test prep as a genre. What that means is we will focus on one topic (inferences and context clues are the two most recent) and practice that skill in different genres ( fiction and non fiction). We are looking at lots of different texts. Some books we will read through entirely, or we may just look at a few pages and dissect them depending in the skill for the day. We will be doing these kinds of lessons for the next 2 weeks and then we will begin practicing reading and breaking down test prep passages similar to the Eog passages and questions the will see.

In writing we are wrapping up our book reviews and will begin a new PROBE. This new PROBE will be based off electricity and magnetism. We will spend the bulk of this week researching and gathering information. Most of this will be done online. The class has had lessons in media and computer on conducting online research. Since this is the third PROBE we have done, the expectation is higher this time and students are expected to have 3 paragraphs with at least 3 facts in each paragraph. 

In science we are still working with electricity and building circuits. We have been introduced to a switch and created a circuit to make a motor run. We will begin looking at the difference between parallel and series circuits as we modify the basic format.

In math we just wrapped up metric measurement and now we are working with customary measurement. Most if this is straight memorization, so please encourage your child to keep practicing.

Conversions

As we continue working with measurement here are a few trick I have been working on with the class. There should be a similar chart in their binders and I their notebooks.

With metric, I taught them "king Henry died drinking chocolate milk" to remember each of the prefixes in the chart. "Units" can be either grams, Liters, or meters. As we worked our way through various word problems, I encouraged each child to draw out the chart and then do one basic conversion across the chart...1km=10hm=100dm=1000m=1000dm=.... Below shows the work we did going from 4 km to _cm. Of course this is just one way. It takes a lot of time, but is accurate when converting.  This method is just moving decimals to the left or right. We drew another chart and discussed how this is really multiplying or dividing by 10s. All of metric is based on tens.

Yesterday we started customary measurement and all your darlings had a chance to show their artistic skills with feet, yards, and tomatoes. :) we drew these out along with a conversion chart to help with measuring length. This week we will be focussing in various customary measurements. Your child should be bringing home their notebooks to help with conversions, but I will also upload pictures of our notes, so they are here too.

Your child also has a math sheet with some difficult word problems related to measuring length, capacity, and weight. They only have to do one each night after they have been taught that particular topic. Yes, they are challenging, and yes, we will share strategies and go over each problem the following morning in class. 

Measuring weight: ounces, pounds, tons

The land of G.... Customary measurement of liquids

Gallons, quarts, pints, cups, and fluid ounces:

Measuring time:

April 14-17

What a whirlwind of a week we have had! We had an awesome in house field trip and learned some more about animal adaptations.  The class all got to bring home their own animal creation living in the tundra.They were very creative! We all had an amazing time at Old Salem and enjoyed learning about the Moravians and Winston Salem in the 1700s.  Thank you so much to our volunteers! We could not have done it without you!

Here is what we did this week in the classroom:

Language Arts: 
We are learning how to annotate throughout various forms of literature.  We looked at a short article, a newspaper, and next week we will be looking at some poetry. This is a great skill to practice right before EOGs.  We will be digging deeper into our old Case 21 tests and practicing annotating those as a test taking strategy during our next two Saturdays.

We have been reading and learning about Old Salem and religions while working on reading comprehension skills

We started learning about the format of and writing our own book reviews as a form of persuasive writing.

Math:
This week we started our measurement unit. There are some charts in your child's binders that will help transfer units.  We read Millions to Measure and learned about capacity, mass, and length using both metric and customary measures.  This week we focused on metric measurement.  I showed the class how to use the chart and make their own to answer various word problems.  

Social Studies:
This week we learned more about Old Salem and the Moravians. Next week we will continue working with electricity and building various circuits.  When we finish that unit, we will be learning about religions, customs, and traditions.

Flat Stanley went with us to Old Salem.  Here are a few pictures of his adventures with us!

March 31-April 4

The fourth quarter is here, crazy how fast the year has flown!

Here are some tips for breaking down number lines. These are the steps I have shown the class to help them break down number lines into smaller parts so they can more accurately label their fractions/decimals.

Start with a basic number line between 0 and 1

break it in half

now cut those sections in half again to make fourths

and cut each of the fourths in half to make eighths. (I usually don't label those since there is limited space)

Now that your number line has been broken down into benchmark numbers, you can more easily find where various decimals would be plotted.