Note: Ident-A-Kid pictures are tomorrow, and Picture day is Thursday!
Today we had a bit of an unfortunate experience.
So each year I give students a bit of a ‘test’. I ask students to talk together in an online setting (In this case a chat room) and ask them some questions to get them started. I do this to gauge their understanding of how to properly interact with others on the internet.
This time, our class chose to take many of their comments to inappropriate places. We had a discussion about what constitutes quality posting and discussion, and what constitutes what I like to call ‘noise’. Unfortunately most of our comments turned to noise very quickly. As such we are going to practice some more before we are given freedom on the website.
So in Language Arts we are still discussing how to compare and contrast characters and stories. Tonight students have two selections to read. One is the well known Tortoise and the Hare story from Aesop. The other is a little less known story from the Ngiri people entitled the The Tortoise and the Antelope. Students should write down the traits displayed by the characters, the setting, the plot, and the theme of each story tonight. Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my digital copy of this, so I do not have one to upload here. My apologies!
In Science we took a look at our plants, and noticed the warm weather is NOT being kind to them. This might be a very rough growing season.
We talked some more about producers, consumers, and decomposers, and this led to a lot of questions as to what would happen if an ecosystem suddenly lost one of these three.
Tonight students should be thinking of and answering these three questions (on a sheet of paper):
What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its producers?
What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its consumers?
What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its decomposers?
The important part of each answer should be the ‘why’ or the ‘because’ that follows your initial answer. Please put some thought into this. We have said over and over that ecosystems must maintain a balance. Why? What would happen if that balance was suddenly gone?
In Math we are still talking about how we solve word problems. It is imperative that students get into the habit of first asking themselves what a word problem is asking. Students OFTEN miss questions because they make assumptions about what a question is asking instead of simply reading and making sure. Next students should identify what information they have, and formulate a plan of how to go from the information they have to the information the question is asking for.
Tonight students have 7 more word problems to do. This time, some are multi step problems. We did one as an example:
Students should finish the rest:
so, tl;dr
Read and fill out the character traits, plot, setting, and theme of The Tortoise and the Hare and The Tortoise and the Antelope.
Answer these questions:
What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its producers?
What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its consumers?
What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its decomposers?
And do these word problems (just as we have been doing them up until now!)
example: Aug17Example
And as always, read!
Have a good one,
-Mr. Potter