Our second day went wonderfully.  How was yours?

 

First we talked a good bit about factoring and how it is used in real life.  We have been doing a real life factoring problem each morning, dealing with splitting up different amounts of objects into equal groups.

For homework tonight, students have a short factoring and greatest common factor worksheet to do.  It’s fairly straightforward, and we will have a short quiz on finding factors tomorrow.

FactoringJanuary29

GCFJanuary29

 

We then spent a good amount of time going over our Math Case 21.  We really need to focus on reading closely and ensuring that we answer what the question is asking.  One question specifically that MANY students missed asked for the price of five apples, and half of our class answered how much a single apple costs.

 

Missing something like that is unfortunate because it’s not really an ability problem (they were perfectly capable of solving the problem), but an attention to detail problem.  It is sad that sometimes questions on standardized tests are ‘gotcha!’ questions like that, but it is a reality that we need to be prepared for.

 

We then started talking about the fantasy genre, which we will be focusing on this quarter.  We talked about how one of the main characteristics of the fantasy genre are (surprise!) fantastical elements.

We watched two short clips, one that was VERY fantastical, and one less so, in order to demonstrate that a story not necessarily be truly out of this world to be included in the fantasy genre.  The students asked that I link them here so they might watch them later if they liked:

Francis

The Tale of Mr Revus

 

This led us to realize that our Mysterious Benedict Society books that we have been reading are included in the Fantasy genre.

For homework tonight, students should have taken home their Language Arts journals with their summaries of the Mysterious Benedict Society books.  They should make a list of at minimum 3 realistic and 3 fantastical elements from the book.

 

In Science we got a chance to talk about why our aquarium turned green (Algae bloom!), and then talk a bit about weather.

In order to understand that weather is the state of the atmosphere in a specific place, we had to talk about our atmosphere, and then we had to discuss how our planet orbits the sun at a tilt while rotating, creating day, night, and seasons.  This led to more discussions about why we don’t feel the Earth moving, and eventually a detour to the ISS camera, so we could see the Earth truly spinning:

ISS live feed

It was a long, winding road we went down, but I think we might ACTUALLY be ready to discuss weather in detail starting tomorrow!

 

All in all, it was a great day!

 

so, tl;dr

two math worksheets on factoring and greatest common factors:

FactoringJanuary29

GCFJanuary29

 

And a list of 3 fantastical and 3 realistic elements from The Mysterious Benedict Society

 

As always, read for 35 minutes and get your reading log signed!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

 

We are back!  I missed the students dearly, and it was so great to see everyone.

 

3rd quarter is one of our shortest, at only 8 and a half weeks.  That means we really have to start out in earnest, and so we jumped right into it today, and we’ll be busy busy busy until the end.

 

In Math, we did some quick review of factoring as we will be working with adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions this quarter.  Being able to find and recognize equivalent fractions will be essential, and knowing how factoring works is the first step in that.

 

Tonight students have a worksheet that asks them to find common factors of two numbers.  They were given tiles and pop cubes to use to help them.

Common Factor Rectangles

They will use the tiles and pop cubes to make different rectangles in order to find factors.  For instance if they were told to use 8 tiles, the rectangles that they can make with 8 tiles are:

1 x 8

2 x 4

 

This means the factors of 8 are 1, 2, and 4

 

They will use this method to figure out the factors of the two numbers given, and then try to find the factors that the two numbers have in common.  They should draw these factors in their rectangles, one above the other.  We did some together as a class as examples, which can be found here:

Rectangle factors example

 

In Language Arts we spent a good amount of time catching up with The Mysterious Benedict Society, and then going over our Case 21 assessments.

 

In Science this quarter we will be talking about weather, and doing a fairly large research paper on a weather phenomenon of our choosing.  Tonight in their motivation reading books, students have a short selection that includes a  research paper to read and some questions to answer.  The selection is on pages 101-102, and the questions are on page 103-104.  As always, the answers should be accompanied by reasoning!

 

When we got back to school, our aquarium appeared to be completely green!  Tonight students should write down why they think the aquarium turned green.  I gave them these hints:

 

The water isn’t green, but something IN the water is green.

What kind of organisms do we find in nature that are normally very green?

Mr. Potter accidentally left the aquarium light on for basically the entirety of the break (instead of the normal timer)

If you know the answer, don’t spoil it for anyone else!

 

so, tl;dr

one page of common factors using rectangle models:

Common Factor Rectangles

P 101-104 in motivation reading with reasoning!

Why is our aquarium green?  response

 

 

It’s great to be back!

 

-Mr. Potter