Math and Science
We have another short week, but no shortage of math to cover! On Monday, we will be wrapping up the last lesson in chapter 8. Students will learn to solve one-step inequalities and graph the results. This is very similar to solving one-step equations from chapter 7. Tuesday and Wednesday will be used for review. Task cards and a practice test should have students prepared to take their test on Thursday. Extra credit for this test can be done at the mcgraw-hill website by completing the online chapter test and bringing in evidence (note, screenshot, print out, etc). This will be available all week until Friday. Extra credit must be turned in by Monday at the latest. In science we will be reading about Darwin's voyages around the world, and the observations he made about the many animals he encountered. We will be discussing terms like natural selection and evolution, and look at ways animals have adapted over time. Students should expect a section 1 quiz later this week. English Language Arts, Reading and History We will be finishing the fictional narratives - all revised, edited, typed, proofread and printed this week. Students have truly enjoyed having this break of creative writing from all the expository writing the curriculum requires. And speaking as such, students will be practicing and writing a compare and contrast response to the facts about Athens and Sparta they read last week. Due Tuesday is the Day in the Life writing assignment. This is a paragraph practicing writing from a character's point of view: in this case, the role your child played in our role play about Ancient Athens. Grammar this week concentrates on the tricky work of subject and object pronouns. Math and Science
This week in math we will be working on data tables and graphing linear equations. Students will learn to use (x, y) coordinates to plot points and graph lines. A quiz should be expected on lessons 1-4 on Wednesday. In science we are wrapping up our lap book this week. Monday, students will work on graphing the circumferences of their eggs from previous weeks. The lap books will be due on Wednesday and will be counted as a project grade. Later in the week we will begin to learn about Darwin and evolution. This will take us through the rest of March, and into the beginning of April. English Language Arts, Reading and History Our goal this week is to finish writing, revising, editing and typing our fictional narrative. Students have reviewed the parts of a story in doing this assignment such as rising and falling action, climax and resolution. This has all been done in class and students have been really enjoying writing creatively for a nice change... We will begin the research for comparing and contrasting the ancient cities of Sparta and Athens and review the procedure for writing that kind of essay. A role play about life in Ancient Athens will be the centerpiece of history class this week. There will be a point of view writing assignment due on Friday. Students have a reading slip on Wednesday and spelling homework and spelling test on Thursday. We continue in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Today we reviewed what a cliffhanger and a potboiler was.... English Language Arts, Reading and History
The bulk of the week will be working on the one and only fictional narrative we do all year. Students have been loving writing a creative 5 paragraph story with all the traditional story elements of characters, setting, rising and falling action, climax and resolution. We've also been practicing dialogue. We will offiially be reminding students of all the skills tested on MCAS beginning this week. This week we look at how open responses are graded, how the test looked last year and author's purpose in writing. For History, we will be demonstrating the Democracy of Ancient Athens with a debriefing assignmment due next week. Math and Science
This week in math we are wrapping up chapter 7. This chapter has focused on writing and solving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division equations. Mental math and math properties are applied to solve for variables in the equations. We will be spending some time Tuesday and Wednesday reviewing, and students should plan for their test on Thursday. The online practice test is available until Friday for 5 extra credit points. In science this week we are finishing up our egg lab. Early in the week we will be putting our eggs into corn syrup, our last liquid, and making our observations. For the rest of the week and into next week, students will be working on a lap book lab report. This project will include all of the information gathered from the lab, as well as analysis and conclusions from each student. English Language Arts, Reading and History The short week lends itself to writing: we've got the neighborhood setting paragraph due on Tuesday and we will begin our creative writing stories later this week in class, after students have done some planning for the story at home. I'm going old school for grammar this week: by the end of the week, my goal is that everyone can identify a verb in a sentence and most students can identify which of 5 tenses the verb is. I want Raging Rhinos to be confident and correct in their understanding of basic grammar. No more random guesswork! In History, we'll discuss Greek architecture and or course, the Parthenon. We continue reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. |