Catching Up

It’s been a pleasant week so far, but being away for Break has made it hard to catch up with all the things I need to do … like this blog!

Homework:  (1) Do “Relating Shapes and Solids” and “Minimum Wage.”  (2) Do Decimals and Exponents 3. (3) Do “Drawing a Picture.” Students will have an extra credit opportunity tomorrow or Monday on this advanced material on ratios. (4) Science and History: Fifth graders should finish the vocabulary and the questions on pages 91. Fourth graders should do the cartoon questions and “Free Enterprise.”

Also, finish Measuring Up, chapter 21, in both Language Arts and Mathematics books if needed.

Two Days

First, a couple scenes from Friday’s Walk-a-thon. Room 19 did quite well overall, coming in fourth in total contributions and being the ONLY class to have 100 percent participation. Thank you so much, students and families!

Today was a pretty quiet day. We went to the library, always a highlight of the week.

Homework:  (1) Do the usual Monday spelling assignments, including matching terms and definitions for these words with Latin roots. (2) Do the Charlotte Doyle evaluation. (3) Do the Exponents and Algebra paper. 

Science Fair project should be coming in by Wednesday. Also note the Friday Egg Drop assignment. This is a great little introduction to engineering for our students and it is always a hit. Thank you Mrs. Cha for arranging this for the entire fourth grade!

Vanishing

Today, combining a bit of visual art and math, we began work on double point vanishing perspective. This is initially a difficult concept for the students, but once they grasp it they start seeing the world a little differently. For this reason, it’s a great - if hard - lesson.

During our grade-level blocks, the fifth graders continued their work on their colony PowerPoints. The fourth graders did part two of the “Mock Rocks” experiment.

Here they were taking apart their mock rocks and examining the constituent “minerals”. We’ll be doing more with them tomorrow.

Homework:  (1) Do spelling practice as usual. Also do the spelling word search. (2) Do the math review sheet on fractions and geometry. 

Remember tomorrow is Walk-a-thon! We are almost at 100 percent participation. 

The Few, the Proud

Our fifth grade students were off at the Reagan Library today on a field trip, and I understand they had a great time. With only the fourth grader the room seemed a bit quiet, but they did excellent work. We started our Earth Science unit by examining “mock rocks.” Rocks and minerals are what we will be studying over the next few weeks.

We are also finally getting our mission posters and reports done. Today the students started on their reports using the Chromebooks, and many finished the posters. They’re done in the style of 1930’s Southern Pacific Railway travel posters. Many are wonderful!

Homework:  (1) Do the spelling jumble. (2) Finish the final draft of the Charlotte Doyle paper. (3) Do the math worksheet.

We Did It!

Our challenged was not only met, but exceeded! 

Homework:  None today!

Advanced Work

Quite a productive day! We did all the usual things at the beginning of the day. After recess, the students began writing a five-paragraph essay. I didn’t do this until eleventh grade, and didn’t get good at it until college. How much more advanced our room 19 scholars are than their teacher was! We are doing this by observing the changes in Charlotte Doyle’s personality over the course of the novel. This is also challenging the students to support their assertions with evidence from the text - a key skill in the Common Core State Standards.

Fifth graders are researching a colony they chose yesterday. All the tech resources that have become available to us recently are certainly helpful here. 

Fourth graders worked on their history test, and also started on a travel poster for their mission. We will be finishing this before Spring Break. I know we’ve talked about it for a while. 

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words twice in cursive. Write sentences for words 11-15. (2) Do the spelling crossword puzzle. (3) If necessary, finish the three body paragraphs of the essay on Charlotte Doyle. Most students did this in class. (4) Do “Area of Triangles.” (5) Do “Transformations and Congruence” and “Translations in Space”. (6) Do Fractions to Decimals 3. 

Quick Post

A very busy day…just the homework for now.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words twice and do sentences for words 6-10. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Finish the prewriting for the Charlotte Doyle paper. Students should have 3-4 words to describe Charlotte at the beginning, the middle, and the of the story. (4) Do the Circles paper. The back of this is challenging, but first convert find the fraction - for instance, Mar’s 2 moons are 2/60 of the total - and then convert that into a percentage. Multiply the percentage by 6, as each of the 60 moons represent 6 degrees of the circle. (5) Do the Area of Parallelograms paper. This should be fairly straightforward. (6) Do the fractions into decimals.