October 9

Week in Review #3

Last week in the classroom I began DRA testing students to get a better idea of where we’re at as readers. The DRA will allow us to understand 3 areas in reading. These include how much we like, or don’t like to read, our reading fluency and reading comprehension. The results should help us to think about some things we can do to improve our reading. Meanwhile we continued to read selections for the theme Nature’s Fury. We started reading a story titled “Volcanoes.” This was our first informative story, or nonfiction text. Can you remember the 4 different types of Volcanoes mentioned in the selection?

In math we have just finished up Unit 1 for Place Value. We will continue to take time to review the concepts for this unit throughout the school year. Don’t forget the idea I had you consider for place value. Remember that the patterns for place value all start at the ones place. So, there is symmetry around the ones. I explained that you might think of it as a solar system with the ones place being the sun. Check out an old post titled “The Center of the Place Value Universe”. I hope this helps to paint a clearer picture in your head.

Our class continues to explore aquatic environments. Kids finished adding notes and data to their fish logs. Also, we added new organisms to the tanks. Do you remember what they were? We removed some organisms from the tanks too. Unfortunately, some of our guppies didn’t make it. After learning that the acid in the water is caused by the fish we decided that it would be a good idea to change the water often. I guess we didn’t change the water soon enough. By the end of the week we put the fish back in our large classroom tank to be enjoyed and studied for the remainder of the school year. Make sure to have a little fun and hop on the FOSS Science website to play a little game with aquatic environments called the Virtual Aquarium. This game will help you practice what you learned.

Last we started to look at elements of art. Explain the art activity captured in the picture below to a friend or family member.

Elements of Art Graph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things to come in the coming week include:

Reading-Finish DRA

Writing-Finish “Letter to My Teacher”

Math-Begin Unit 2 Adding and Subtracting with Whole Numbers and Decimals

Science-A Special Science Project for Dr. Salina Bryan

Art-Tool Art

The challenge for this week…..

What type of Volcanoe is Mt. St. Helens? If you compare it to the Shield Volcanoes on the Hawaiian Islands, with Extraterrestrial Volcanoes on Mars what differences and similarities do you notice? Look at the USGS site for help.