Class Updates
by Mrs. Gaal & Ms. Marrion
This week's Friday envelope contains:
-Envelope with SMI results and letter
-Decimal review and practice sheets
-Science paper airplanes – Graph and conclusion
Day of Service
Humanities:
Students spent time this week in reading workshop and finishing up their graphic novels. In reading workshop, many chose to read graphic novels as inspiration for their own. We were lucky enough to borrow a cart of graphic novels from our library to have just to ourselves during these past two weeks. During my mini-conferences with students, I often asked what techniques they noticed in the books that they could borrow in their own novels. Students noticed the specific emotions of the characters, different types of bubbles for thoughts vs. spoken dialogue, the different sizes of panels, as well as a variety of gutter spaces.
Yesterday, students debated some themes that are similar to ones they will read about in The Giver, starting next week. Some examples of the statements that were debated are:
- Families would be much closer together in a perfect world because they would share their feelings with each other.
- Life would be easier if we didn’t have bad memories in our heads.
As a reminder, please make sure to have a copy of The Giver in class, starting on Monday.
Math/Science:
Math
· This week we recreated a restaurant scene, wrote menus and learned how to calculate tax and tip.
· On Thursday, April 30 everyone received a review packet – Decimals.
· This packet needs to be completed by Wednesday, May 6. In addition, everyone searched the newspaper for ads and wrote word problems to practice calculating discount.
· Unit Test – Decimals Thursday, May 7th.
Science
· THIS WEEK’S HIGHLIGHT – Paper Rockets
After viewing the You Tube video, How to Make a Rocket from Paper and a Straw, every student was responsible for creating and test flying their own mini- paper rocket. We graphed our results using Create a Graph and then calculated the relationship between each flight and the longest flight. We had fun applying what we were learning in science to our current unit in math involving percent.