I hope you’ve bought your bread and milk!
Because I am realistic, students today got Monday AND Tuesday night’s homework. I probably should have given them Wednesday night’s homework, knowing Wake County….
Due to the early release, today was basically a catch-up day. We talked about mixed numbers, improper, and proper fractions, and how we can go from mixed numbers to improper fractions and vice-versa, and how they are ….. SURPRISE!…equivalent fractions.
Students have 4 pages of problems converting from mixed numbers to improper fractions, and also from improper fractions to mixed numbers. This is two day’s worth of homework. If we somehow have school tomorrow, then only the converting from mixed numbers to improper fractions sheet is due.
I expect each problem to have boxes filled out representing what is happening. Many of our students could tell me “You just multiply the whole number by the denominator” but when asked “Why would you do that?” they had no idea. That is a problem! The point here is to understand that each whole number is split into that number of fractional parts in order to make an improper fraction. Later we will be talking about why we would want to do this (sometimes it makes problems easier).
In Language Arts we took our STAR reading test, and for the most part our students are right on track, making a year’s worth of growth.
We took one final look at “If”, and tonight students should finally answer the questions that go along with the poem. At this point they should have the entire poem written in their own words.
Next we quickly revisited our discussion of dialogue, and tonight students have a cartoon to fill in with dialogue of their choice. They should then write the story using only text, as if their reader could not see the cartoons. This time, the story should have dialogue AND normal text, so it shouldn’t be too difficult I don’t think.
Finally in science we passed out some weather books. Remember that students will be doing a substantial research paper on a weather topic of their choosing this quarter. Students should have a piece of paper with some questions about their possible topic that they came up with. Their homework is to use their book to attempt to answer one question. They should also (hopefully in the course of trying to answer this question) come up with at least two MORE questions about their possible topic.
So, tl;dr
4 pages of converting fractions
If poem questions
dialogue story
Read weather book, answer question about chosen topic, come up with two more questions
Also students should be reading their North Carolina Children’s Book Award book! I should basically be seeing reading logs filled out with these books until students have read three of them on their own.
Have a good one, and hopefully see you Wednesday!
-Mr. Potter