Week 23: Finishing Integers, Starting Mysteries, and Continuing Environments

Welcome to Week 23!  Thanks for all the visits at Open House on Thursday.  It was great to see everyone.  Also, a big thank you to our parents who volunteered to run the Ice Cream Social (all proceeds go towards the 5th graders trip to 6th grade camp) and to the parents who volunteered for our Art Docent project on Friday.

Here's the week:

This week in reading we are going to continue to work on synthesis using a mystery. We are reading The Schwa Was Here.  Students are working on identifying the characteristics of a mystery: detectives, witnesses, suspects, clues and red herrings.  We are spending a lot of time discussing how the characters change and how those changes impact the story and the outcome of the mystery.  By verbalizing how the story is changing, students are learning how to synthesize.    Students will not any additional reading homework beyond their reading logs. 

In writing this week we are going to revise and edit our personal narratives.  Students have an editing check list they will be using to revise and edit. Students also have a rubric to use while they are revising and editing.  The final draft will be due on Thursday this week. With the final draft, students must turn in the three separate paragraph worksheets, the rough draft, and the revising and editing check list signed at the bottom. 

In math students will be finishing up their studies on integers.  This week they will be looking at graphing of equations and working backwards within story problems.  We will be testing on this chapter on Thursday after a review and some peer instruction.  Coming after Mid-Winter Break is fractions.  Should be an eye opener for some of our kids.

In science we are continuing our work with environments.  Thus far students have observed plants within a terrarium, setup an investigation to determine what amount of water would be optimum for our plant life, written an investigation on the optimum amount of light a plant needs, and observed the optimum amount of salt for our brine shrimp to hatch.  This week students will be concluding their bring shrimp investigation while creating a new investigation of there own.  Students will be asked to find one variable to use while growing plants.  For instance...my example will be the use of salt water on plant growth.  So I will create four environments that are exactly the same except for the amount of salt in the water that I use to water the plants.  Should be fun!

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Allyn and Alaina