English Language Arts, Reading, and History
No new story this week - just trying to catch up on the material we had to postpone for last week We review the vocabulary of a story in the movie "The Adventures of Tintin" and identify how to find the main idea and details of a narrative. We review how verbs work as helping verbs and introduce the present and past progressive. We review the lesson we've been working on with figurative language to prepare for our short unit of poetry next week. We begin the study of Greece with designing an Ilustrated Timeline of some of the important events of Ancient Greece. Typically, I have broken the larger project into shorter due dates but the overview of the entire assignment is to find the required dates from the textbook by Wednesday, write the dates out as a rough draft due Thursday and the completed final copy on oak tag is due on Monday. I will have the assignment paper posted in the Downloads section. We'll have our delayed notebook check on Tuesday.
0 Comments
English Language Arts and Reading and History
We are learning the origins of the Iditarod race in "The Great Serum Race". We will be practicing sequencing main ideas and details in this Historical Fiction story. Students have vocabulary due on Thursday, when we have the Open Response test and Spelling homework p. 58 due on Friday when we have the test. Other reading skills done in class will be identifying important ideas from an informational text. Notebooks will be checked on Friday: all papers should be bound into the notebooks, completed and in order. I will be posting the notebook list in the Upload section. We'll be wrapping up Direct and Indirect Objects with an class activity as we prepare ourselves for the Verbs next week. Reading slips are due on Wednesday. We continue with Massachusetts Book award books. We’re also beginning a new novel this week which is part of our CoreStandards. We’ll be reading “Tom Sawyer” as a class activity. This book, although difficult, has traditionally been really popular because of the universal theme of growing up. I love this book and I will be throwing all my enthusiasm for Mark Twain at 12 year-olds who don’t yet know they will love it too! Besides, they will be reading the sequel “Huckleberry Finn” in 8th grade. Math Students will take their chapter 5 test on Monday of this week. As predicted last week, we had a snow day, and the test was bumped from last Friday. The remainder of the week we will be introducing and beginning work on chapter 6. The next few chapters all focus on algebra which many students tend to love. Students will learn to write expressions and solve for variables in equations. This week we will cover lessons 1-3. Students will receive their NEW MATH BOOKS for the second half of the year this week! Part 1 of their math books should remain at home and shouldn't be discarded until the end of the year. We may use the books to revisit concepts throughout the year, especially as we approach MCAS. Science Our main focus for this week is our upcoming test on Wednesday. Students must know the organelles on plant and animal cells, along with the function of each. There are many resources within their binders to study, and a plethora of activities they can use online to practice as well. Here is one that I found particularly useful. Math
This will be a short but productive week! We are finishing up chapter 5 this week by learning all about coordinate planes. Students will be responsible for knowing the 4 quadrants and the coordinate pairs that make up each. We will practice identifying the coordinates on the planes, as well as plotting our own points given a set of coordinates. On Friday we will have our test. If for some reason there is a snow day or delay this week, that test will be pushed to Monday of next week. Science In science, we will continue working to identify the structures and functions of organelles within plant and animal cells. Students are responsible for knowing organelles such as the cell membrane, cell wall, nucleus, mitochondria, chloroplasts, vacuole, ribosomes, lysosomes, cytoplasm, endoplasmic reticulum, and golgi bodies. They should be able to draw and/or identify these organelles and know the function of each. Study materials can be found in binders. This test will be next week, but there may be a "pop" quiz headed their way soon! English Language Arts, Reading and History I have 2 main goals this week: to use Chromebooks to publish student persuasive writing and to really work on student understanding of how to identify the main ideas and supporting details in an informational text. The sequencing /main idea test will be on Wednesday. Students have prepared for this test by identifying what the main ideas from each stage of mummification are and by writing them in order. Recognizable spelling counts and wrong information doesn't count agains the student. My suggested order of study is on the bottom of the study guide and that is to review the information, write out the information and the summary statements and then write everything out without the study guide. It will take some time, especially since most students have not taken a content open response kind of test before. Reading slips are on Wednesday. English Language Arts and Reading
No new story this week. We concentrate on the important skills of understanding sequence and main ideas in history this week. We'll use the time to work on reviewing figurative language and literary elements in Reading journals. We continue with the Massachusetts Book Award books during reading groups. Reading slips are due on Wednesday.. As time permits, we continue with action verbs and indirect objects. We have completed drafting, revising, and editing some excellent persuasive writing pieces and are just waiting for to print. Students worked very hard on this writing! Evaluated papers will be in writing folders soon.. History We will be demonstrating the steps of Egyptian mummification. In this project, students will be in charge of performing the sequence in small groups. This has been a lesson in sequencing and summarizing as well as learning the gruesome job of getting ready for the Underworld. The Mummification Ritual will be on Friday, after much practice in class. Following the performance, students will get a study guide and take a test on the sequence next Wednesday. Math This week in math we will continue to work with integers and graphing on number lines and planes. We will begin by comparing and ordering positive and negative numbers in sets. Throughout the week we will be doing some problem solving activities, and looking back at dividing fractions to find decimals. Students will learn the difference between repeating and terminating decimals, and apply that knowledge to compare and order more complex numbers. There will be a quiz on Friday on lessons 1-5. Science This week in science students will be learning the various organelles found inside of plant and animal cells, along with their functions. We are singing a fun "rap" to help us remember all of this content. Ultimately, students will create a brochure on plant and animal cells, their organelles, and all of their functions. M ath
Happy New Year! In math this week we will be starting Chapter 5. This chapter is all about integers and the coordinate plane. This week students will be learning new vocabulary, including integers (positive and negative) and absolute value. Students will be graphing positive and negative integers on number lines, finding the absolute value of numbers, and comparing and ordering integers using their absolute values and position on a number line. A refresher video on these topics can be found here. Science We will continue our study of life science throughout the month of January. Our primary goal for the month is to learn the different organelles of plant and animal cells, along with their functions. This week we will begin to explore the different vocabulary of the organelles and the jobs they have. This fun song can help students to practice and study these concepts. English Language Arts, Reading and History We'll start the year off with preparing to publish our persuasive writing done in class. This will consist of students revising their writing by checking sentence structure, organizing ideas and embellishing vocabulary. We'll follow that with editing and checking spelling and grammar. Rumor has it, we will be using our own chromebooks soon. Our story this week "Rumpelstilskin's Daughter", is a great study in parody with some wonderful examples of literary elements and figurative language. Grammar is about action verbs and their friends direct and indirect objects. No spelling this week. You will see our Nile River maps on the virtual bulletin board here soon. Attempts were made to upload our videos about the famous Egyptians to this website. I fear that weebly .com may be a victim of net neutrality because the upload time is riduculous! |