Updates and
Announcements:
What a
fantastic first week back! Students are settling into our classroom nicely,
learning classroom procedures, and successfully switching between classes for
our block schedule. Students have a chance to work under 3 different teachers
and lead teachers get the opportunity to truly specialize in a certain subject.
So far, this has been a smooth and gainful transition.
Our week in
learning:
This week in
ELA we will be reviewing nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in grammar, and
will practice diagramming basic sentences. In Spalding we will continue
to set up our notebook and will have our first test on Thursday. This
year students will have 15 words to practice on Monday and Tuesday and we will
test over the list on Thursdays. We are already enjoying reading Voyage
of the Dawn Treader, and will continue to read and annotate in class this
week. Wednesdays we will take a short quiz to review the last four roots
we have studied in class. Students will be responsible for knowing the
meaning of the root as well as an example of a derivative.
In History,
students will be continuing their study of World Geography. Students will:
-Plot
coordinates using longitude and latitude lines
-Discuss the
time zones in relation to the International Date Line
-Create globes
out of balloons, labeling the important imaginary lines of the world
-Prepare for a
vocabulary quiz
We will have
many short, low-stakes quizzes in history (usually two per week, lasting no
more than 5 minutes) to solidify learning. Students will take their first unit
test on Monday, August 22nd.
In science we are
exploring the scientific method through experimental observations. You may have
heard about our penny lab last week. This week we have another interactive
project planned that will give the students insight into the importance of
variables.
In Math, student
will continue working in the billions place value and estimating large numbers.
By the end of the week, we will be working with prime and composite numbers, factors,
multiples, greatest common factor, least common multiples and prime
factorization. In our Calendar Math, we have the opportunity to practice some
many of these skills on a daily basis.
