Tomorrow is early release.  Please know that school will end at 12:30.

We are also having our first celebration tomorrow.  The students earned 75 paws, which got us our first medal.  For our celebration students decided we would watch a short film, followed by some board game time.  All the while we will be chewing gum.  Make sure you get all of your homework finished, as students who have outstanding homework will instead spend celebration time working on that.

 

This morning we did more work with decimals and multiplying simple fractions by whole numbers.  We continued discussing how we can take numbers like 3.4 and think of it as 3 and 4/10 or 3 + 4 x 1/10 in order to solve different problems.

Tonight students have a few more equivalencies to write.  I wonder if tomorrows quiz is going to look JUST like this…

formsofdecimalsandfractionssep8

 

We continued our talk about explorers (or should we call them exploiters?) today.  It’s interesting to get students’ ideas about these individuals.  Student images of them are usually pretty positive, and often people see their contributions to the modern day as good things.  However rarely were they motivated by a love of humanity or knowledge.  When we get down to it, many of these individuals weren’t exactly the best of people.

Tonight students should finish the questions that go along with our reading.

ageofexploration

In science we took a good look at our gardens.  A few of our seeds have not yet germinated.  This means we will replant some of them tomorrow.  We also started measuring.  We decided that we can use string to measure the plants from soil to tip of stem.

 

Finally we spent a good amount of time today organizing our math manipulatives.  They have turned into a great big pile of messes, and we sorted and organized them today.  It’s funny how much the students enjoyed this.  I’m fairly certain none of them go home excited about cleaning and organizing their room, or folding their clothes.  However when it comes to sorting play money into bins or putting pop cubes in bags, they are having the time of their lives.

 

 

 

so, tl;dr

Finish some math equivalencies:

formsofdecimalsandfractionssep8

Finish the questions that go with our reading:

ageofexploration

 

And as always, read and get your reading log signed!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

Reminder: Tomorrow (9-8) is PICTURE DAY!

 

This week is so short!

This morning we continued talking about how decimals are simply fractions in base 10 form.  We talked about multiplying simple fractions, and how we can represent numbers in these different forms.

For example:

4 x 1/10 = 4/10 = .4

These are all different ways to represent an equivalent value.  They aren’t the SAME, but they ARE equivalent (have the same value).  This is important because sometimes different forms of a number will help us to do certain things easier.

Tonight students have some of these equivalencies to do.  As always there are examples (In the form of last night’s homework)

decimalfractionpracticesep7

 

This week we began our foray into social studies by talking about the human timeline on Earth up to the age of exploration, which really begins the modern day history of the United States.  Tonight students have some more reading on this to do, and some simple questions to answer.

ageofexploration

 

In science we went outside, took a look at our plants, and realized they were missing two VERY important things: Water, and sunlight.  We had placed our plants right up against the side of the building so as to avoid the tropical storm that hit us this Labor Day weekend.  This unfortunately meant they weren’t getting much sunlight.  We moved our planters out into open sunlight and gave them a good watering.  Hopefully we’ll see some improvement in the next few days.

 

We talked a great deal about how we can see if our plants our doing well or not.  We decided one way to do this would be to measure their growth.  We then talked about how we can go about recording this data in an easy to see and understand way.  This lead to us creating some graphs that we will use to record the growth data on our plants.

 

Please remember TOMORROW IS PICTURE DAY!!!

so, tl;dr

Write out some equivalencies:

decimalfractionpracticesep7

Read and answer some questions (the first five) about the age of exploration:

ageofexploration

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Fastest update ever, because I need to go pick up my daughter from her first day of school – apologies!

 

Math!

Examples PLUS equivalencies to write:

MathSep6

 

Social Studies (explorers and such!)

ExplorationSep6

 

And read!

 

Students also took home their interims today.  Please take a look and get those signed.

 

have a good one!

 

-Mr. Potter

APTT is tonight!  I hope everyone is able to attend.  You may arrive at 5:15 to drop your children off.  There are activities for students and smaller children as well.  We will then begin our session at 5:30.

 

Today was basically a huge effort in getting our seedlings transplanted in our planters outside.  This took a LOT of our day, but hopefully everyone had a good time.  I have a ton of pictures that I will be sharing with everyone later.

 

That said, we did get a bit of other work done, and have just a *bit* of homework:

Write me an introduction for your character you created last night.  This should be 2-3 paragraphs and look like the beginning of a story, when a character is introduced.

 

Also, answer these problems:

DecimalProblemsSep1

 

And that’s it (besides reading of course!)

Students had a bit of time to work on these in class when we weren’t going crazy with all of our planting and such, so I’d be VERY surprised if they have much of this left to finish.

 

 

Again, I hope I see you tonight at APTT,

-Mr. Potter