SCIENCE NIGHT TONIGHT
6pm – 7:30 pm Come out and see what our young scientists have wrought!
Congratulations to our Science fair winners!
Ava! Maria! Dakota!
Real quick post, sorry trying to get a lot done today….
Math: Page 73 in Motivation math
Science: read pages F30-F55, and do two worksheets
Have a good night, hope to see you here!
-Mr. Potter
Another day, another homework post!
We actually had a great morning, followed by a bit of a rough afternoon! Talking out unfortunately had us go from negative 2 to positive 4 in just 15 short minutes. This meant we had four laps to do at recess. Much grumbling ensued.
In math, we worked more on fractions, and today started talking about finding areas of rectangles with fractional sides. This will lead us back to a real discussion of multiplying fractions.
The students’ homework tonight is to do page 67 in their motivation math book. This should mostly be review, but will give me a good indication of where they are in their understandings so far. A fair amount of students said they had lost or thrown away their motivation math books. Hopefully they can find them at home, or they will have to purchase new ones.
In language arts we had to spend some time re-doing their comparison charts from yesterday. Many students are still struggling with using evidence to support their statements. When forced to produce evidence, many find that their statements don’t make any sense. We will continue working on this.
We then worked on quite a few poems written from the point of view of animals. Here are the five poems the students were given in their groups. Can you identify what animal’s voice is telling the poem?
Could you tell? If not, here are the answers!
For Language Arts students are to write their own poem from the point of view of an animal. They may pick any animal they like. The poem must be at MINIMUM five lines, and I would prefer it rhymes, but that is not definite. We will be revising this and working on it more tomorrow.
In science, we are still working on work and power. The students have a review worksheet for vocabulary, and then they also went onto the messageboard, watched some study jams, and posted back with something they learned. Feel free to go here to check out their responses. (You’ll have to log in, and let me warn you that the children are addicted to smiley faces)
RecognizingVocabularyScienceMar13
tldr;
Page 67 in motivation math book
minimum 5 line poem told from the point of view of an animal of your choice
recognizing vocabulary review sheet
RecognizingVocabularyScienceMar13
Have a good day!
-Mr. Potter
We are on track to have a fantastic week!
We have been working lately on our calling out in class. We have a number line on our blackboard that goes from negative 5 to positive 5. When we call out, we go up a number, and when we go a while without calling out, we go down a number. if we end up in the positives, we have to practice being quiet at recess while we walk together. If we end up in the negatives, we get that many extra minutes of recess. Today we ended on NEGATIVE SEVEN! The students are really just doing fantastic in the room lately, and we are getting a ton done as a result. Make sure to congratulate your students if you get a chance!
In math, we are talking more about working with mixed numbers and how to move back and forth between those and improper fractions to make our problems as simple as possible. On yesterday’s homework, students were to convert their mixed numbers totally to improper fractions to perform their operations. We talked about that today, and how sometimes that just is not very efficient. If you have a huge number like 11 and 1/2 minus just 1 and 1/4th, then converting totally to an improper fraction just doesn’t make sense. And if we have to subtract a fractional part that is larger than the fractional parts that we started with (for instance 2 and 1/3 minus 1 and 2/3) then we don’t really have our number in a form that is simple to subtract 2/3. We definitely have the 1 and 2/3 inside of our 2 and 1/3, but it’s just not in a form that’s easily accessible to take.
In this case, we convert just ONE of our wholes to fractional parts. So we convert 2 and 1/3 to 1 and 4/3. Then it becomes simple to subtract our 1 and 2/3.
This is the focus of tonight’s homework, with just a simple seven problems for students to do. I expect them to be done well, with all work shown. The first two are done as examples here:
This is very similar to when we do subtraction with ungrouping. You can think of this as ungrouping a whole.
In Language Arts, I was a tad unimpressed with the summaries that I received for the poems from yesterday. As such, we are working more on ensuring that we do our best on our summaries and that they accurately reflect the content. We talked about looking at the first and last sentences in particular of paragraphs and stanzas and how they often give us a clue as to the main idea of that paragraph or stanza. To practice some of these skills, students should write a summary of a short excerpt from the story Black Beauty.
We also took our quiz on our cess/cede/ceed words. Hopefully we see good things from this. I’m hoping the extra work from writing the stories helps!
In science, we talked again about balanced and unbalanced forces, and watched the Bill Nye video on Atoms. This seemed to clear up some of our misconceptions and misunderstandings that we left with yesterday.
Students also have a short true/false worksheet from their science chapter on balanced and unbalanced forces.
So, tldr;
One math worksheet on subtracting fractions without converting the whole thing into an improper fraction.
One summary of a short bit of Black Beauty (paragraph by paragraph!)
One science worksheet on forces
It may seem like a good bit, but honestly the science and math should be short and sweet. I expect some time to be put into the summary, however!
And as always, let’s get that 35 minutes of reading done and reading logs signed!
Have a nice night, and see everyone tomorrow!
-Mr. Potter
School occurred today!
We had a full weekend and I know you were as happy about that as I was.
We got a ton done today, and we have a good bit of homework to reflect that. In Math, we are looking at subtracting mixed fractions. We came to the conclusion that the easiest method is to convert the mixed numbers to improper fractions and then work from there.
So for math we have a set of ten subtraction problems.
The first three problems are done there as well. We have four basic steps:
1: convert the mixed numbers to improper fractions.
2: convert to like denominators
3: subtract
4: convert what we have to a mixed number and simplify
In language arts we are still working on identifying themes. We read a short selection in our motivation reading book that included two poems. Tonight students should summarize these two poems the same way we did last week: stanza by stanza. Then they should identify what they believe to be the theme.
We had a very interesting talk about forces that led to a discussion of atoms in science. is can be difficult for students to really wrap their head around the concept of atoms and how they make up everything. We will keep hitting on this as we go.
so tldr;
one math sheet
two poems summarized with themes identified
ALSO!!!
tonight is COSMOS with Niel DeGrasse Tyson. This is a follow up to Cosmos with Carl Sagan and is an extremely wonderful and interesting program About the universe. Unfortunately it starts at 10pm so I don’t recommend staying up for it but I do recommend taping it! It is on National geographic tonight and fox on Sundays. If that isn’t possible don’t worry as we will watch an episode or two in the classroom. Hopefully it will get a few of ours hooked on science!
As always, sorry I just can’t stop typing, and see everyone tomorrow!
Another full day of school. I could get used to this. The weather forecast says rain tonight, but above freezing. Keep your fingers crossed for us please!
Today we talked again about volume, and the students did very well finding the volumes of different rectangular prisms and finding the sides of a rectangular prism given the volume. I was very impressed that they are picking this up so quickly. We also worked a bit on how to draw a 3D rectangular prism ourselves. Ask your student if they can do it for you!
The math homework is an extension of the homework from last night. It again asks the students to draw representations of fractions, and then solve the problems using models to find common denominators. Just like last night, we have done the first problem together.
AddingSubtractingFractionsMar6
In language arts we are focusing more on themes, and starting our little foray into poetry. We talked about how to summarize what is going on in a poem stanza by stanza, and how this can help us to determine a poem’s theme. This is especially helpful when the poems contain a great deal of figurative language.
The students have two poems to summarize and identify the theme of. One we did in class, and the other is for homework. Many students did very well on this, and managed to get theirs done during our homework/read aloud time. It wouldn’t hurt to look back over, however, and especially to think over their chosen theme.
In science we went over our quiz from last week, and I was very impressed with their overall achievement. We had a bit of a snag talking about gravity – some students are still having trouble with the concept that everything has gravity. The Earth is pulling on us, but we are also pulling ever so slightly on the Earth. We also had to go over the fact that gravity affects all objects equally, regardless of mass. We watched a neat mythbusters video about it. Feel free to take a look!
tldr;
One math worksheet – students must draw representational models!
AddingSubtractingFractionsMar6
Two poems – summarized and theme identified!
35 minutes of reading, as always!
Also, REMEMBER THE TALENT SHOW IS TONIGHT. If you would like to come out and watch some of our students put on a great show, come on out – the show starts at 6:00!
Have a good night, and HOPEFULLY I will see everyone tomorrow.
-Mr. Potter
And by homework, I mean homework for me!
Students only have to do their reading log for the weekend. The students received a new reading log today, so they should have that for parents to sign.
I will spend this weekend updating the forum. By Monday all of the students’ grades and weekly homework updates will be in their personal sub-forum. If you have any questions, please send me an e-mail or a call.
Have a good weekend!
-Mr. Potter
REMINDER: Tomorrow is group picture day. Students took home another order form for these group pictures on Wednesday. If you would like one, the order form was in their Monday folder, or they can simply bring in 10 dollars per picture and I will reciept it to them. Checks should be made payable to Strawbridge Studios inc.
Whew! Today was super busy. We were doing things straight up until the bell. There are just not enough hours in the day.
We did a LOT of work today with equivalent fractions, and how they can help us add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. We also did a tremendous amount of pair work, and the students are getting much better at explaining concepts to each other.
In order to get in a lot of this practice, students have two worksheets to do, adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators.
They MUST show their work, which means show what equivalent fractions they used, and how they converted their fractions (by multiplying by a form of 1) and what form of one they used. This should not be news to the students.
In Language arts, we are wrapping up our time with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I will miss this book, as it has really sparked some fantastic discussions here. Today we even had students listening into and trying to talk into OTHER groups’ discussions with their own opinions.
Students also posted their opinion on the messageboard of who is the main character. We have some fairly varied responses and justifications in there. If you would like, please feel free to go have a look at what your child thinks.
We had a frank discussion also today as to what constitutes a post of substance, and what constitutes noise on the messageboard. For the most part I believe the students took the talk to heart, and I have seen some improvements already.
For Language Arts tonight, students should finish, and then write a two paragraph reader’s response to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Stories often detail the growth or downfall of characters. Their response should be to focus on a character from the book, and tell how that character changed from the beginning of the book to the end. Their response should include traits of their chosen character at the beginning of the book (with proof!) and then traits that changed at the end of the book for that character (with proof again!). This is due tomorrow, and will be submitted for a grade.
We then went right to the bell in science, as groups presented their findings to questions such as “what makes a rolling ball stop?” and “which falls faster, a bowling ball or a marble?”. The ability of the students to work collaboratively in groups is improving daily it seems, and I am quite pleased with their presentations today.
As always, the tldr;
Two math worksheets:
One two-paragraph paper detailing the changes one character from TLTW&TW underwent from beginning to end. The paper should include proof/examples from the text that support your claims.
I hope everyone has a good evening, and look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!
-Mr. Potter
Today was a day straight out of the twilight zone!
We had some problems with talking out and following directions today. We had been doing very very well lately, so today was a bit of a shock.
We also had some trouble with students copying down their centers correctly, and we had traffic jams all over the place moving around the room. It was chaos, but hopefully tomorrow will go much smoother!
In math, we talked more about equivalent fractions, and what we can use them for. Today we focused on how equivalent fractions can aid us when we are adding fractions. Since it is difficult to add fractions when they have unlike denominators, we can find equivalent fractions with like denominators, and then we can add them easily.
In that vein, tonight’s homework is an adding fractions worksheet. Students must still show me what form of one they are multiplying or dividing by in order to find equivalent fractions.
In language arts, we played a Smartboard game identifying similes and metaphors. The students got a *little* excited about that one. Ask them about it……if you dare. I hope we can eventually add similes and metaphors to our own writing, so tonight students are asked to finish a simile worksheet where they write their own similes.
We had good discussions today about The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Who is the main character of this book, really? Are there good guys and bad guys? Hopefully we can come up with some kind of answer for these questions as we finish up the book this week. Tonight students should have at least read through chapter 15.
Today I also passed out your student’s login and password information for our messageboard. We talked about posting to it, and what is and is not appropriate. If you would also have a talk with your student about what you consider appropriate behavior in a public venue like an internet messageboard, I would be much obliged.
The students posted a simple hello message in our general chat, and made sure that their forum was visible to only themselves. After looking at what our students have posted, I may have to disable smileys on our site. Just…..so…..many…….smileys. We will definitely have a talk about that tomorrow, as well as revisiting what makes a decent post, and what is just essentially noise. This looks to be a real learning experience for many of our students.
I have not populated the individual forums with their homework and grades yet because I wanted to make sure the settings were correct and nobody could see another person’s sub-forum. I will now start filling them in with daily homework updates, and grades. It will take a few days to get caught up with what we have done so far, so I beg your indulgence.
Please also make sure your student understands that this login and password are for themselves and you the parents ONLY. If you discover your student knows another student’s login and password or has told their login and password to another student, please let me know immediately.
As always, the tldr;
One adding fractions worksheet
One simile worksheet
Read chapter 15 in TLTW&TW
Thanks, and I will see everyone tomorrow!