Weekly Updates

Announcements

Virtual Learning Drill/Continuity of Instruction:  Wednesday, March 25th

Spring Break:  March 28th-April 

Sprit Week: April 13 - 17. 

          Monday - Pajama Day
          Tuesday - Mismatch Day
          Wednesday  - Career Day
          Thursday - Twins OR Multiples Day
          Friday - 80’s Day 

It's another jam-packed week and everyone is excited for Spring Break.  We are saying good-bye to Uta on Tuesday. He is moving back to Japan, and we have a goodbye party Tuesday afternoon.  

Please read below to learn what is happening in our Units of Study.

Reading Workshop

The historical fiction unit is drawing to a close.  Students have been working in book clubs, and independently, to practice comprehension skills within this challenging drama.  As a close to Book Clubs, groups will be sharing their thoughts on their books in a podcast.  This week, all of our teaching points center on identifying different themes, such as racism, courage, tolerance, equity, and love in different texts.  

Writing Workshop:  Bringing History to Life

Next week, as well as the two weeks following our return from Spring Break, students will be working to bring one historical topic to life through any creative way they choose.  Next week, we will work on narrowing our research topics.  While YouTube is a great way to learn general information about a topic, next week our teaching points will focus on reading non-fiction texts and developing a note taking system to highlight and track information about our focus topics.

Our teaching points will include:

• Determining main idea and supporting details.
• Using multiple sources to find more information.
• Taking meaningful notes that include both facts and ideas.

Math:  Area and Scale Drawings

4E spent a little more time exploring area and perimeter last week than anticipated. We focused on finding the area for non-square shapes which was a challenge and a great source of inquiry. Students will be thinking about the spaces we work and play in and exploring the concepts of scale and area.   

Specific objectives we will focus on this week are:

• Measuring to the nearest quarter inch.
• Drawing "rough" floor maps.
• Using a scale to create a scale drawing.

Solar Energy

Last week we finished our solar cookers. We had 6 solar cookers and 6 cookies. 2 were stolen by animals (crows, we think), 1 was still gooey in the middle, but the other 3 were cooked all the way through. I took the rest of the batter home to cook. The next day, as students were typing up their notes, they could compare their solar cooked cookies to oven cooked cookies. Then we had a yummy snack as we worked!

Indus Valley Civilization

We are starting to talk about the Indus Valley Ancient Civilization. This connects to our studies with the Ganges from the fall and connects to our current Bringing History to Life project. Right now, we are exploring how archaeologists find objects from thousands of years ago and infer to build a story of long ago civilizations.

Specific Objectives we will focus on this week are:

• Infer meaning into everyday Indus Valley objects 
• Explore what archeologists have found and the meaning they make 
• Determine why we explore the past, what is the significance on present and future 
• Connect civilizations with culture and identity