What a great Monday!  I had a meeting this morning, so the children were left a bit to their own devices during morning check-in, and they did a fantastic job.  We have a firm grip on our routine at this point.

So we did some review of plants, animals, ecosystems, biomes, food chains, food webs, and all that kind of stuff this morning.  We have received a big ol’ review packet, and took a bunch of little quizzes to see how much we remember.  It went much better than expected!

Tonight students should answer questions 1-20 in the packet.  We did 1-5 together in class.  They should also pick two words from the packet (or from their science journal) and define the words in the back of their science journal in their own words.

Next we did some work on our project.  This week students are figuring out their taxes, utilities, and their student loan payments.  To say the children were surprised at the amount of money they would be paying in taxes is an understatement.  They were also in a bit of shock after we talked about utilities and other necessary bills.  All of a sudden students realized they have much less money  than they thought they did.

We had an opportunity to talk about how sometimes when parents say we can’t go out to eat every day or we can’t buy every video game in the world, it’s not because they are being mean.  I really like some of the discussion and questions the students have brought up with this project.

This also gave us a great opportunity to review multiplying by decimals, as we worked out our tax rates and net income!

Next we talked about the basic mathematical operations, and did some more work with volume.  Tonight students should finish pages 172 – 179 in their math coach.  This deals mostly with volume and area.

 

 

so, tl;dr

Finish questions 1-20 in the science eog review packet.

Pick two words from the packet or science journal, and define them in your own words in the back of your science journal.

Pages 172-179 in Math Coach

 

Read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

 

Just a very quick update today.  I have too many meetings to go to.

 

Today we talked a bit about memorial day, and read In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 

This led us on a talk about wars, world wars, nuclear weapons, and all sorts of stuff.  It was very interesting, if somewhat depressing and scary.

 

After this we continued our review.

Tonight students should read this passage:

Whales

Just as they have been, they should answer the questions with reasoning, write a summary, analyze the text structure of a paragraph, and tell me a genre and sub-genre.

 

In math we did more fraction operations review today.  We also started talking about volume!!

Tonight students should check all of their math sheets from this week.  They received the answers in class.  Anything they missed, they should re-do until they understand why they missed it, and how to do it correctly.

Students should also do pages 168-171 in the math coach.  It’s introductory volume stuff, and should be pretty straightforward.

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter