There is APTT info and parent teacher conference info at the bottom of the post. Please read it!
Tuesday already! The students came in obviously refreshed this morning, and we had a really fantastic day.
This morning our school counselor Ms. Carter came and talked to us about middle school and our future. She gave us a very inspired talk about the importance of responsibility and taking responsibility for our own learning. She talked with us about how school is an opportunity to learn and better yourself, and that it is our responsibility to do the best we can.
We then talked about main ideas and summaries, and how they are similar and different. We talked about how a main idea is the most important idea – basically what the story is about. It is often able to be communicated in a single sentence. We looked at some newspaper/Time for Kids headlines/subheadings and noticed that those are often in fact the main idea of the selection. Students then practiced filling in a main idea graphic organizer with Ms. Hertling using Time for Kids.
Tonight, students received a little story about battling robots. They should fill in a main idea graphic organizer for this selection.
Organizer example:
Next we took a look at our plants and they are getting HUGE. Ask your student how big their corn or their cucumbers were today. We definitely have some stalks that are reaching 80cm.
In Science we will be working a bit on vocabulary this and next week. We took a quick pre-test on this last week, and the results were … less than optimal.
Tonight students wrote down 5 words in their science journals. Their job tonight is to define these five words using whatever resource they deem reliable. Their science textbooks, their parents or siblings, even the internet is fair game here. The five words they should define are:
predator
prey
carnivore
herbivore
omnivore
Some students may already know the definition of some or all of these. Even so, they should look up a definition to ensure their own ideas are correct.
Finally, we spent some time reviewing our area models and took our quiz we missed on Friday. This quiz had some puzzle type questions in it utilizing the distributive property of multiplication over addition. This will let me know who is really getting it, and who needs some more clarification.
so, tl;dr
Read about battle bots and give me an organizer identifying the main idea, supported by three details!
Define these 5 words (even if you think you know them, double check!)
predator, prey, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore
And as always, read!
-Mr. Potter
APPT and Parent-Teacher Conference info:
Today students took home information regarding our Academic Parent Teacher Team meeting. The meetings is the evening of the 17th, which is next Thursday. I would very much appreciate seeing everyone there. I will probably bug you about this. Apologies in advance!
I have also set up a sign-up genius for parent teacher conferences. There is a link at the bottom, and also up at the top under ‘general links’. The majority of the times up right now are are either 7-8 in the morning, 4-5 in the afternoon, or 5-6 in the afternoon. If these do not work for you please let me know. If you give me a time that works for you, I will make it work for me. If you don’t sign up for one of these, I will probably also bug you about that. Apologies in advance! 🙂