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

No homework for the wekeend except of course to read!

 Students should feel free to work on their poems however. 

We had a day FILLED with working on our poems. 

And also tests!  Another day, another grumble!

Please be reminded that the poems should be from the point of view of the animal – that means you talk as if you were the animal.  You don’t just do a “guess what animal this is!” type poem.  Some students were a bit confused with this.

Have a fun-filled weekend and let’s keep our fingers crossed that the Sunday precipitation is just rain!

-Mr. Potter

We had a really great morning today.  The students for the most part had their homework and reading logs, and people actually copied down their centers without having to be reminded a million times!

In Math, we are still focusing on strategies for subtracting fractions.  We worked more today with breaking apart/ungrouping a single whole into fractional parts.  So we are talking about doing things like:

37  and 1/3     =     36 and 4/3

Or

9 and 1/5    =   8 and 6/5

We do this because if we see a problem like:

37 and 1/3      –        2 and 1/2

You don’t really need to break 37 and 1/3 all the way down to an improper fraction like 112/3 or 224/6.  We can just break apart a single whole so that we have enough to subtract our 1/2 fractional part.

This is the focus of tonight’s math homework, which can be found here:

SubtractingFractionsMar12

In language arts we went over our vocabulary quiz on our ceed/cede/cess words, and it seems for the most part the students did well.  Based on this I will continue to have the students write a quick short story using the words in addition to their sentences each week we do a new vocabulary list.

We revisited our talks about the story of the three little pigs and then the true story of the three little pigs, and how the narrator and their perspective can change a story.

Working off of this, students were given a poem to read and summarize, and then are asked to compare the poem to the black beauty reading they did yesterday, focusing on how the author’s point of view can influence how a story is told.  Also they should compare the themes of the two selections, and how they may be influenced by the narrator.  This can all be found here:

SummaryAndComparisonMar12

In Music the students are learning about jazz.  If you love Wynton Marsalis as much as I do, have them listen to this.

We did manage a bit of recess before the winds pushed us inside.

In science we had a VERY long battle with the idea of doing work and power, and how they are all related.  Work = force x distance.  It’s how much force was exerted over a certain distance, and we measure it in Joules (Newton-Meters).  If I move a chair across the room and you move a chair across the room, we do the same work.

If I move a chair across the room, and you move two chairs halfway across the room, we do the same work.

Power, is a measure of how much work is done over time.  We measure it in Watts (joules/second).  If you and I move chairs across the room, we did the same work.  If I do it in 30 seconds, but you take 30 minutes, I have more power, as I did the same amount of work faster.

This was REALLY tough on the students, and we’ll be revisiting this idea in the upcoming days.  We had quite a few who were checked out halfway through our discussion and investigation.  You know what they say, the beatings will continue until morale improves!

alrighty tldr;

One math worksheet on subtracting fractions using the ungrouping of single whole numbers:

SubtractingFractionsMar12

summarize a new poem and compare it to the black beauty reading selection from yesterday, hopefully focusing on the narrator and how it changed what information was available to the reader:

SummaryAndComparisonMar12

That’s it!

T-minus 8 instructional days until Case 21 assessments.   >___<

See everyone tomorrow!

-Mr. Potter