Magnets Magnets Magnets!

 

I can’t believe how many of our students had never used a compass before!!!

It’s a new world, full of new-fangled gps, google earths, and online maps.

Today in science we busted out the compasses, and talked about how they work by lining up with the Earth’s magnetic field.  We then tested out a few different objects to see if they would affect the compass at all.  We discovered that copper wire and plastic are non-magnetic, but that steel nails are magnetic.  Tomorrow we will see if we can possibly magnetize some of those items that were non-magnetic.  It should be good fun.

 

In math, we started our unit on multiplication.  We’re going right back to the basics, with what multiplication means, powers of ten, and the base ten system and place value.  We talked today about knowing what would happen when we multiplied certain numbers.  For instance if we multiply something by 1, we get that number again.  If we multiply by a number greater than 1, we get a number greater than our starting number, and if we multiply by something less than 1, we get a number that is less than our starting number.  We extended this to talk about place value.  In that vein, tonight’s homework is to answer the following, with examples…..

 

What happens when you multiply…

 

ones x tenths =

ones x hundredths =

ones x ones =

tenths x tenths =

hundredths x hundredths =

tenths x hundredths =

 

I want them to answer what the answer will be in terms of, and then give me an example.  We did three of the problems together in class, so here are examples if needed:

Multiplication_Homework_May6

 

In Language Arts, we did some more research in the computer lab.  The students will be writing a fairly in-depth research paper on a facet of weather of their choosing.  We discussed that doing research means becoming an expert on a given topic, and their beginning questions should be “What is it?” and “How does it happen/form, and why?”.

 

We also talked about our new vocabulary words.  They are flect and flex words.  Unfortunately I don’t have any extras to post here, so I will just post the list:

deflect

reflect

reflection

retroflex

infection

flexor

reflex angle

inflexible

circumflex

flexible

 

Students should write a sentence for only NINE of the words (Leaving out reflex angle, as it’s kind of a a toughie to really write a sentence as it has one and only one use).

 

 

so tldr;

6 math problems that ask students what happens when you multiply two different place values, with examples

9 vocab sentences

 

Come tomorrow ready to play with some more magnets and electricity!

 

-Mr. Potter

What a dreary rainy thundery day.

 

Good thing we’re studying weather!

In math, we did more long division, yay!

We talked about using what we have learned to convert fractions to decimals.

First, we reviewed that if we are splitting one thing among 2 people, each person gets 1/2.  Essentially if we are splitting x things among y people, the answer is x/y.

Then we talked about how if something like 1/4 is equivalent to 1 ÷ 4, then we can solve 1 ÷ 4 using our new-found knowledge of division.  Our answer will be a decimal, and this will allow us to convert fractions to decimals.

The students have a worksheet that has fractions to convert to decimals.  We have done the first three together, so they have a good example set already.  They should do ONLY the second row of problems tonight.  they SHOULD NOT do any more problems.  We talked about this in class today.  I DO NOT want them to do any more than the second row tonight.  The other rows will be assigned tomorrow night but I want to ensure they are doing this completely correctly before they move on.

FractionsToDecimals

In Language arts, the students should finish writing their 10 sentences for their vocabulary words.

 

In science today, we previewed some reference books that we will be using in our study of weather.  They each came up with a quiz question from their chosen book and quiz’d each other.  Ask them what their question was, and see if you can answer it!

 

Starting next week, the students will be picking one facet of weather on which to do a simple research project.  They will gather information from a variety of sources, and write a research paper, complete with bibliography.  This is of course something we will be doing over several weeks.  I do not expect them to start searching for information until we finalize topics next week, but it would be a good idea for them to think about what they might really like to research.

 

We also had this fantastic opportunity to talk about what exactly are thunderstorms, what makes them different from regular rain, and what is going on with clouds anyway?  The students read a nice little passage about clouds and answered some questions as a group.  Ask them tonight if they remember what clouds are! (a mass of liquid droplets).  Also ask them which clouds they should be wary of (cumulo-nimbus – the storm clouds).

 

 

tldr;

one row of converting fractions to decimals

FractionsToDecimals

10 sentences, one for each of our vocab words

 

Hope everyone gets home safely tonight, and that tomorrow clears up at least a little bit!

 

-Mr. Potter

So today was the big day….

 

Report cards did go home today!  As did Star Reading scores, and Third Quarter Case 21 scores.  Of course I forgot to send the report cards home in those nifty little manila envelopes.  Instead it is all just in the Monday Folder.  I apologize for that, and will be sending the nifty little folders home tomorrow to get signed.

 

In math today, we finished up our exploration of division using money.  We began talking about the normal long division algorithm, and how it equates to what we have been doing, and the shortcuts and visual representation it provides.  I told the students there was a hard way and an easy way to do it.  They have become so accustomed to using the sentences, that they are now calling the shortcut long-division method the ‘hard’ way.  In math tonight, they have a single problem to do.  They should do this problem BOTH ways.  On one half of their paper they should write sentences, and on the other side, they should do it using the traditional long division algorithm.

Here is an example that the students copied into their math journals today.  They should have also taken home their math journals for reference.

LongDivision

The problem they should do these ways is:

62.65 ÷ 5 =

In Language Arts, we talked again about our junct/join/jug words, shared our stories, and addressed a few misconceptions on usage.  We then took our vocabulary quiz.  I haven’t graded them all just yet, but it looks very promising.

We also read a short selection in our motivation reading about electricity, and talked about how electricity is generated.  We linked this back to forces and motion, and talked about air pressure.  We also watched a short video on geothermal energy.

For Language Arts, students should answer the short response questions on pages 67 and 68 of their Motivation Reading books.

 

It was a fairly short and sweet day.  The kids are doing a good job, and for the most part doing their work.

 

tldr:

One math problem done the hard way and the easy way:

62.65 ÷ 5 =

 

Two pages in motivation reading: 67 & 68

 

Have a good night!

 

-Mr. Potter

Today was another very good day.  It is honestly worrying me how great the students are being.  Our calling out is down, our lines are fantastic, and our work output is up!

 

In math, we talked more about how we would split different amounts of money up among people.  We came up with this procedure yesterday:

1. Hand out ___ tens to each person.
2. We have ____ tens leftover.
3. Turn our ___ leftover tens into ____ ones.
4. We now have ____ ones.
5. Hand out ____ ones to each person.

In our problems today we ran into the situation when we had a dollar as a remainder.  The students were asked to come up with ideas about how they would split a dollar among themselves.  They came up with the idea of breaking our dollar down even more into dimes.

6. We have ____ one left over.
7. Turn our ____ one into ____ dimes.
8. We now have ____ dimes.
9. Hand out ____ dimes to each person.

We did a few problems as groups using this procedure, and the students were getting much better with it.

 

For homework in math, they have to do these three problems USING THE PROCEDURE AND WRITING THE SENTENCES.

Divide $3.00 among two people

Divide $5.20 among four people

Divide $12.80 among 8 people

 

We then spent a good portion of the rest of the day reviewing our Case 21 math assessment.  The students absolutely blew this one out of the water honestly.  Our kids have been working their tails off on this stuff, and it showed in their scores.

We only got through about 3/4ths of the test, however, so we will be continuing with that tomorrow.

In Language Arts, the students are to write a story using all 10 of their vocabulary words.  This is not due tomorrow, but instead due Saturday.  That is the reminder that there is school Saturday!

 

so, tldr;

In math, three problems using the procedure and writing the sentences we came up with as a class.

 

In Language Arts, writing a story using the vocabulary words.  This is not due until SATURDAY!

 

 

Also, a quick note on grades:

Report cards will go home next Monday in the Monday Folders.

I must appologize about the grades from 3rd quarter not being up in the forums.  I had finally gotten that all figured out and into the forums mid-trackout, however my wife then figured out when fiddling with the site that you could play with the web addresses, and actually see everyone’s tests, not just your own.  If you managed to see this the day that I uploaded them, you got to see all of the grades, but then I pulled it all down immediately after my wife figured that out.  I am in the process of trying to figure out how to make those scans of student work secure at the moment.  This is something fairly new to me as I have not done much with these types of tools before.  I apologize for this taking so long.

 

For fourth quarter, we are just going to put numerical grades up in the forums, as well as daily updates on homework.  If you go to your child’s own sub-forum now, you can see if they turned in their homework and reading log today.  If they have not, there is a post from them explaining that.  This will be a daily update that you can check.

As we get grades I will be putting those into that forum as well, and hopefully scans of at minimum major assessments as soon as I figure out the security issue on that.

 

I apologize for the delay, and I appreciate your understanding as I figure things out.

 

Have a good one, and see everyone tomorrow!

 

-Mr. Potter

Welcome back everyone!  I hope you all had a great track out.  I know that you were all sad to see your little ones head back to school.  I am sure you loved having them in your house 24 hours a day.  Definitely.

 

Today was fantastic honestly. Aside from a few calling out issues,  the students came right back in and we fell into our normal routine.

 

We spent the morning exploring the process for dividing numbers.

Before we left for track-out, I realized that many students understand the PROCESS for doing long divison, but don’t actually understand what is going on ‘under the hood’ so to speak.  We will take this week to explore that and ensure everyone understands what is actually going on, as opposed to memorizing a simple procedure.

We used money to help illustrate the process.  We talked about how if you had 12 dollars (one ten dollar bill and two one dollar bills) how you would split this up among 3 people.  In it’s current state of one ten and two ones, it is impossible to split up the money.  So we have to break our 10 dollars down into ones first, and then distribute ones to each person.  We talked about what was going on, and came up with this process:

We illustrate 12 divided by 4 in this way:

1 ten                     2 ones                                    split among 4 people

1.  We hand each person 0 tens.

2.  We have 1 ten left.

3.  We turn our ten into ten ones.

4.  We now have 12 ones.

5.  We hand each person 3 ones.

 

The students are to use this method to split up three different amounts of money among different numbers of people.  We did the first one as a group, and you can see that here: DivisionProcessMar23

For the second and third problems, they should follow this method and provide the step by step just as they did above.

The second problem is to divide 68 dollars among four people. (6 tens and eight ones)

The third problem is to divide 96 dollars among 8 people (9 tens and 6 ones)

 

We then went over our newest list of vocabulary words.  This week we are working with junct/join/jug words.  The students should write and use each word correctly in a sentence, for a total of ten sentences.  Unlike normal, this is due tomorrow as opposed to two days from now.

We spent the rest of the day going over our Language Arts Case 21 assessments from last quarter.

A few things that really jumped out at me about our students’ performance on this test:

For the first 24 questions (there were 45 questions total) the students did very well.  This test took the majority of our students a full three hours.  This means that for the first half of that, the students were doing very well.

For the last 21 questions, the students on average did very poorly. (This is not all, but just average).  The questions were not significantly more difficult during the second half of the assessment.  I also noticed that many students stopped ‘proving’ their work during the second half, and stopped underlining passages and generally using good test taking strategies.

This strikes me as a major stamina problem.  If the students cannot focus and stay focused for the full three hours, then what they actually know and can do is not going to show up on a test like this.  As they go on, they will only encounter more tests like this, and their work in general will require that they can read for great lengths and remain focused on a passage or book.  This was something that I honestly did not work on nearly as much as I should have during the 3rd quarter.  We will definitely be addressing this by adding back stamina reading into our daily routine.  In this way I hope to build the students up to a point where they CAN sit there and stay focused on the task at hand for an extended period.

 

It is also imperative that the students truly are doing their reading each night.  This also helps with stamina, and helps expose them to just a ton of different things.  People who read more simply know more.

 

Students also had meetings with our guidance counselor Mrs. Carter today to talk about electives and their assigned courses for Middle School.  If you have any questions about this please feel free to contact myself or Mrs. Carter.  The students took their course selection sheets home with them, and they need to be signed and turned back in ASAP!

I am looking forward to a productive quarter, and am excited about getting all of our students ready for middle school!

 

tldr;

Math homework: 3 problems done in the format we talked about in class

Language Arts: 10 sentences for our new words.

 

Middle School: Look over the course selection sheet, fill out what needs filling out, and bring that back!

 

Have a good one!

 

-Mr. Potter

So it was an absolutely ENTHRALLING day of Case 21 assessment.  I really have to commend our students.  Over three hours of testing, and for the most part they worked their tails off.   Give them a break when they get home tonight, please.   We have two more days of this……

 

No homework tonight except to do 35 minutes of reading and fill out the reading log.

Tomorrow is the Math Case 21!

I have some good news!  Wake County has seen fit to turn Friday into a full day, and gotten rid of Saturday school!

Friday = all day normal schedule and we track out!

Saturday = we are soooo not here!

 

Also, another reminder that the final $40 for the field trip is due on Friday.

 

Get a good night’s sleep, and eat your breakfast – tomorrow is another long day!

 

-Mr. Potter

CASE 21 week!  And Track out week!

Tuesday: Language Arts Case 21

Wednesday: Math Case 21

Thursday: Science Case 21

 

Since we have our Language Arts Case 21 tomorrow, tonight the only homework the majority of students have is their reading log.

Today was a day absolutely filled with review.  Review of math, review of summarizing poems and selections, finding main ideas, and what happened leading up to the civil war.

In class today, we did a social studies worksheet, two science worksheets and a poem summary.  I would say that 20 of 23 students completed this in class, as we worked on much of it together.  If, however, students did not utilize their time wisely, they may still have these unfinished.  In this case, their homework is to finish these worksheets.

tldr;

Homework is to read, get a good night’s sleep, and then have a hearty breakfast in the morning.  It is going to be a long week for the students.

 

See you all tomorrow!

-Mr. Potter

 

p.s.

Tonight at 6pm is the East Wake Band informational meeting.  The meeting is in the East Wake Cafeteria

Friday is still early release

We DO have school on Saturday

Field trip money (the final $40) is due by Saturday!

A nice quick day, and we got a good amount done!

 

We went over quite a few things in math.  Honestly the progress the students have made this semester has been fantastic.  They don’t even realize it themselves.  Many students have gone from being unable to add or subtract simple fractions to being able to convert, multiply, and in some cases even divide fractions with ease.  Make sure you congratulate your student on this when you see them hard at work on their homework.

I had a question from a parent about the conversion method that we are using in class.  These are the notes that the students have taken, and the general method that we use in class.  It is based on the identity property of 1:

ConvertingFractions

 

We then did some catch-up in social studies.  We are talking about the civil war and the causes that led up to it.  This can be a very touchy topic and students can get understandable upset about what they understand as past injustices.  Our goal is to get them to understand the frames of reference from the time period that led to the decisions that people made.  We hope students can understand the reasons that those figures made the decisions, however bad we may now perceive them to be.

 

A nice quick day, and we accomplished a good amount.  Thank you for sending your student even on a Saturday!

 

Some quick reminders:

The East Wake Middle school band meeting has been rescheduled for Monday, March 24th at 6pm in the East Wake cafeteria.  I myself played the trombone through middle, high school, and college.  It was a great experience, and I highly recommend it.

Field Trip money: The final $40 will be due this upcoming week before we track out.

Case 21:

Tuesday, Mar 25: Language Arts

Wednesday, Mar 26: Math

Thursday, Mar 27: Science

 

Track out:  Friday the 28th is still a half day, but our new official track out day is next SATURDAY the 29th.  We do have another makeup day next Saturday.  I know you are as elated as I am.

 

Thank you again to all who showed up today, and I will see you again on Monday.  Have a nice semi-weekend!

 

-Mr. Potter

 

Yesterday….just…..*sigh*

I will stop making jokes about how many days we get to go to school.  It is obviously bad luck.

 

So, we are in full review swing.  Today we reviewed converting fractions, and the students took three full pages of notes.  I could hear their poor hands cramping from my position at the SmartBoard.  There were only a smattering of complaints however.  It is a real group of troopers.

 

We then talked briefly about division involving fractions, and that the inverse of a number is the number of times that the number goes into one.  This will be instrumental in understanding the basic algorithm for division involving fractions.

For homework, students have more review in their motivation math: pages 69 and 70.

 

In language arts we worked to finish up our poems.  For the most part students finished typing their animal poems and added a picture of their chosen animal.  They then printed them out and tomorrow we’ll put them on our wall.

 

Yesterday I “acquired” quite a few paint sample cards from the local home improvement store, and students are going to write their color poems on these.  I shamelessly stole this idea from Mrs. Stample, who shamelessly stole it from the internet.  This is what teachers do, people.

 

For homework in Language arts, students should write some short responses to questions on page 115 of their motivation reading book.

In science, we had a Mad Scientist guest speaker do a presentation for the entire school.  There were explosions, fires, and other things that I would be fired for doing in the classroom.  The students seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

ALSO please remember that the SCIENCE FAIR IS TOMORROW.  Students were supposed to turn in their projects today, but tomorrow early morning will be fine as well.  The judging will begin at 8:30 am in the gym.  Parents and family, we hope to see you tomorrow night for science night!  We will have activities set up throughout the school and you can come in for pizza if you signed up for it, and take a look at all of the neat projects students have been involved with these past few weeks.

If you do come, please feel free to stop by and say hi!

tldr;

two review math pages: page 69 and 70 in motivation math

one short answer page: page 115 in motivation reading

Finish up and bring in your science project if you haven’t already!

 

See everyone tomorrow,

-Mr. Potter

It is depressing as can be outside, but at least we had a full day of school!  Now we just hope that repeats itself again tomorrow.  Did you know this is the longest in a row we’ve had school so far this quarter?  What a crazy winter.

In math, we reviewed finding the area and perimeter of an object that has fractional sides.  Our entire semester has really been building to this point where we can do addition and multiplication of fractions easily, and finding perimeter and area with sides that contain fractions is a great way to combine both of those skills.

The students homework is just a review of adding and subtracting fractions: page 68 in their motivation math book.

 

In Language Arts, we worked more on poetry, and talked about poems that do not rhyme.  We all tried our hand at our own non-rhyming poem about a color of our choice.  We brainstormed things that are that color, and describing words for them.

We then chose a pattern of comparing our color to the items we chose and describing them together.  The students did a very good job with this.  My hope is that I can get these and the animal poems finished and put up on our wall by the end of this week.  If you come for the science fair, stop by and take a look!

 

We then took a VERY lengthy quiz on poems that we actually didn’t finish.   We will finish it tomorrow.  The students were doing a great job summarizing the poems stanza by stanza.  This strategy will definitely help them when trying to analyze poetry in the future.

 

We also read a selection in our motivation reading that contained three poems, and talked about these.  Students are to re-read the selection on page 109 and answer the questions on pages 113 and 114 pertaining to the selection.

 

so tldr;

one review page in motivation math – page 68

 

two pages of comprehension question in motivation reading – page 113 and 114

 

hope for another full day tomorrow!

 

-Mr. Potter