Oh no! I jinxed it 🙁  So today we got a lot accomplished, but we had a pretty rough morning.  We had some real problems with calling out and talking, and we had to do some practice with regards to working quietly.  The afternoon was better, however!

 

This morning we talked a good bit about points of view again.  We introduced the idea that not all 3rd person points of view are the same.  There is 3rd person limited, 3rd person omniscient, and 3rd person objective points of view.  Sometimes the narrator knows everything, including all characters thoughts and feelings.  That’s 3rd person omniscient.  Sometimes the narrator only knows about one specific character’s feelings.  That’s 3rd person limited.  And sometimes, they only know what characters do, and not their thoughts and feelings.  That’s 3rd person objective.

Tonight students have a selection of passages from Roald Dahl books to read.  They should identify if each passage represents 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person point of view.  They should then explain how they knew what each was.

point-of-view-worksheet-5

 

Next we looked at the circulatory system, and particularly at how blood cells act within the system.  Tonight students have a short passage to read.  On the back, they need to look at last night’s homework concerning the heart, and tonight’s homework about circulation, and put them together to describe what would happen to a red blood cell moving through the circulatory system.  They should do this in terms of steps.  Six steps, in fact!

Circulation&Journey

 

Next we started talking about adding numbers in decimal form.  This should be nothing ground-breaking, as we have been adding numbers using the standard algorithm for literally years.  We discussed how we have always made sure that we are adding ones to ones, tens to tens, etc etc up until this point.  When adding decimals we must also ensure we are adding tenths to tenths, and so on.  Tonight students should answer ONLY the addition problems on this sheet:

AddingSubtractingDecimals1

 

Finally we took a trip to the computer lab and played around with a neat app that lets you make your own simple animations.  The students had a very good time exploring and making different GIfs.  We will be using this program in a project we will be doing later this quarter.  Ask your student about what they made!

 

 

so, tl;dr

Identify the pov used in each passage, and tell me how you knew:

point-of-view-worksheet-5

Answer some short questions and then tell me about the journey of a red blood cell through the circulatory system:

Circulation&Journey

Answer ONLY the addition problems:

AddingSubtractingDecimals1

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Today we got a lot of things done!  I don’t want to jinx it, but this has been a very productive week, and I hope that things keep going this way.

 

We have been looking at different primary sources from the times of the early European colonists.  This means we have been exploring points of view.  Today we talked about how different points of view can tell different parts of a story.  Depending upon the point of view, the amount of information we have access to can change.  We are going to be exploring how the point of view chosen for a book can greatly affect the story.  We also talked about 1st, 3rd, and the little known 2nd person point of view.  I’m sure we all know 1st and 3rd person, but do you know what 2nd person point of view is?  What kind of writing would be written in the 2nd person?  Ask your student today and see if they remember!

 

Tonight students have a few short passages to identify as being written in the 1st or 3rd person.  Then they have a paragraph to read and re-write in the 1st person.

POV

 

Next we did a little experiment comparing the strength of cylinders to that of rectangular prisms.  We made paper cylinders and rectangular prisms and then put books on top of them until they collapsed under the weight.

The actual POINT of this was to explain why our bones are shaped like cylinders as opposed to rectangular prisms.  Unfortunately we ran out of time and didn’t actually get to that part of the lesson.  However, feel free to ask your student about how many books they managed to stack on their rectangular prism or their cylinder before it collapsed.  Many students were very surprised at just how much stronger the paper cylinders were compared to paper rectangular prisms.  Tomorrow we’ll wrap this up.

 

Finally we went crazy with more number lines.  As expected, the students did much better today.  We first made a number line that went from 0 to .5, then another that went from 0 to .3.  All the while students needed to figure out how to divide their sentence strips so that the pieces were evenly spaced.  For our last number line, we broke up our 0 to .3 number line into hundredths, which I am happy to say every single student accomplished.

Tonight students have another set of number line problems to do:

DecimalNumberLine2

 

 

so, tl;dr

Tell me 1st or 3rd person pov, and re-write the paragraph as if YOU were Buck:

POV

Tell me where some numbers lie on the number line:

DecimalNumberLine2

and as always, read!

 

A pretty lite load, honestly.

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Great Monday!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween, and that everyone ate entirely too much candy.

We actually got a whole bunch of things accomplished today!  On a Monday even!

 

This morning we talked about powers of ten, and multiplying and dividing by tens, and all that jazz.  We went over our quiz from Friday, and I was happy to see that many students did very well.  We will keep touching on this stuff as we go through the year as understanding how our number system works is extremely important.  In case you are curious, here is the quiz they took on Friday:

Decimals&Base10Quiz

We then looked very quickly at all of the things we have learned about the age of exploration and colonization in North America, and colonist conflict with the Native Americans.

Tonight students need to write two paragraphs for me, giving me as much information as they have remembered about what we have been discussing in language arts and history in the past few weeks:

paragraph 1: What was the age of exploration?
Who (from what continent) was exploring? Why?

The paragraph should start like this:

The age of exploration was….

paragraph 2: What was going on between the colonists and the Native Americans? Did they get along? Why or why not?

And this paragraph should start like this:

The colonists and the Native Americans…

 

This should give me a pretty good idea of what students do and don’t ‘get’ so far.

 

In science we started talking about the cardiovascular (aka circulatory) system.  We learned how the heart pumps blood throughout our body.  The blood carries nutrients and oxygen to the cells of our body, and carries away the cell’s waste products.  Without our blood and our circulatory system, the cell’s of our bodies would waste away.

We also watched this quick little video (these things are very strange, but the students (and I as well) love them for some reason):

Circulatory System

 

Students also have a short selection to read and some questions to answer:

HumanHeart

 

We then took a long time and talked about decimals and fractions.  Students were tasked with making a number line that included divisions into tenths, as well as .25 (1/4th), and .75 (3/4ths).  In order to do this, students needed to measure the length of the paper they were provided, and then divide it into equal parts.  This COMPLETELY flummoxed some of our students, and it was very interesting to see them do a lot of trial and error to finally figure it out.  We took our time on this and eventually reached the conclusion that if our strip of paper is 60cm long, and we are splitting it into ten equal parts, each part should be 6 cm long.  Students eventually all finished their number lines, and they should use them tonight in order to help them on their math homework!

DecimalNumberLine1

This was also a good time to talk about productive struggle.  Even if we don’t know something immediately, it doesn’t mean we give up and stop.  We keep going, using everything we know and all of the resources available to us, in order to figure it out.

 

 

so, tl;dr

Write me two paragraphs –

1st paragraph answers – What was the age of exploration? Who (from what continent) was exploring? Why?

2nd paragraph answers – What was going on between the colonists and the Native Americans? Did they get along? Why or why not?

 

Fill me in on the human heart:

HumanHeart

 

Use the number line you created in class to help you answer these questions:

DecimalNumberLine1

 

And as always, read read read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter