What a short week we had, but still had a lot of things going on! I hope you enjoyed the three-day weekend as we celebrated Veteran's Day. Here's the latest...
Science
- Students designed and began pollution experiments on either acid rain, fertilizer or road salt in our special plants-only experimental eco-columns
- Took an ecosystems quiz
- This week we'll put ecosystems on the back burner as the pollution experiments play out over the next few weeks. In the meantime we'll start a related unit called EiE (Engineering is Elementary--A Slick Solution: Cleaning an Oil Spill--Ecosystems & Environmental Engineering for Elementary Students. More on this soon!
Math
- Continued working with decimals, using base 10 blocks to represent values in to the thousandths place, played fishing for digits game, reviewed the metric system and practiced measuring objects in the classroom
- We'll take the Unit 4 test later this week
Reading
- We continued our focus on schema (activating background knowledge) as students read about the role of decomposers in an ecosystems. Prior to reading we charted what they know & want to know, and afterward, what they learned
- Finished our read aloud--The Gollywhopper Games and started a new read aloud Listening for Lions, a past Global Reading Challenge book.
Writing
- Moving toward a seed story idea--ask your child what their story idea is. It's helpful to have them orally tell you the story ("air write" the story for you)
- Discussed balancing internal/external details, stretching/zooming in on the heart of our stories and not unimportant parts, asking ourselves what we're really trying to say, and looking at mentor texts for ideas--especially for ways to write leads
- Fun Bonus--your child can earn 10 Grizzly Bucks if you have them write and bring in to Mr. Herzberg the word "EiE" on a note.
