Learning Updates

Mountains to Sound Greenway in class enrichment session about the real life choices we face with how we manage our forests.

In small groups students were assigned a particular interest to represent. They had to brainstorm the pros/cons of their approach and give a short presentation to the group. Some interests were developers, lumber companies, low impact recreation, etc.

Web of Life. Students researched a particular organism of the forest at home. At school we started with a producer (plant) and traced the web of life between every organism, finally ending back with the original plant. Students could pass the ball of yarn to another organism who they eat/they depend on, or who eats them/depends on them. 

Ask your student which is more stable--a system like our food web with many parts or a system like a food chain with few parts.

Math

• Finished Unit 3 and took the test
• On Friday we started Unit 4 and began exploring how decimal place value works
• Ask your student how they programmed their calculator to skip count. Why did we do this?
• Also, how does the game Polygon Pair Up work? What's the point of the game?

Science

• Finished Ecosystems unit and took the final test
• Did a Jeopardy review of the unit, and a vocabulary word cloze (fill in the blank) they could take home to study
• Conducted our Web of Life (see above pictures) and wrote about the experience
• Explored a food chain flipchart. Ask your student how we used the Activote Technology to review our learning.

Reading

• Read and discussed a number of chapters from our novel study, Owl in the Shower
• Held a debate between the two interests identified in the book--the loggers & the environmentalists
• Ask your student what's been happening lately in Owl in the Shower. How has Leon changed through the story? How does the book tie in to our study of Ecosystems?

Writing

• Students are drafting new small moments personal narrative stories
• We're building upon all the skills they've learned so far
• Ask your child to explain what a turning point is. How can turning points help you figure out what to write? How does someone listening to you tell your story help you with writing that story? How can your family help with this process?

Book Bingo

• Ask about the school-wide book bingo our class participated in. How did it work?