Plans Week of April 13, 2015

Students playing "Roll a Quotient" to practice dividing fractions.

Highlights from Last Week:

Our Memoir writing unit is off to a great start! Ms. Faucon, our student teacher, is leading it. Last week, students came up with big themes that will shape their memoirs and the stories they choose to express it. Students are writing about friends and family members who made them who they are today, adventures that define their personalities, and unforgettable experiences that have shaped their lives.

Students learned a challenging concept: how to divide with fractions. Parents, like me, you were probably taught to reciprocate then multiply. Well, students solve fraction division in a much more visual way. They draw what they're doing. Ask them to show you!

We learned about the Boston Massacre this week in Social Studies and how bias can influence a witness's retelling of an event. We analyzed the infamous propaganda engraving by Paul Revere that depicted the British ruthlessly firing into an unarmed, innocent-looking crowd. Students were amazed at how inaccurate the picture actually was! We discussed Revere's purpose: to outrage colonial Americans.

Here is the general plan for the week:

Reading: 

• We continue our study of texts about Survival and Resilience. Students will learn to identify "survival" as a theme in a text. They will see how characters and real people have overcome obstacles in their lives and consider how these lessons apply to our own lives. We begin this unit with some whole-class read aloud stories.
• Students will have another round of practice writing an open response using the structure we taught last week.

Writing:

• Ms. Faucon is teaching our writing unit on Memoir. This week, students write their memoir based on a big theme that appears again and again in their writing.  They write about memories and find lasting meaning by writing about big ideas and including dialogue, internal thinking, and details.

Math: 

• Coordinate Grids: Students will learn how to plot a coordinate pair on a coordinate grid. They will also learn how to use a coordinate grid to represent real-world and mathematical problems by graphing points in the first quadrant of the coordinate plane, and interpret coordinate values of points in the context of the situation.
• We may also begin our study of Volume by investigating how many unit cubes can fit into different 3-D spaces.

Social Studies:

• We continue learning about The American Revolution. Students will read, watch videos, create skits, and write journal entries to study this epic event. Student will learn about five major causes of the revolution: The French & Indian War, The Stamp Act, The Boston Massacre, The Boston Tea Party, and The Intolerable Acts. This week, we focus on the Boston Tea Party, the First Continental Congress, and the Intolerable Acts.

Science:

• We didn't get to introduce Simple Machines last week, so we've moved it to this week. Students will investigate uses for things like: a wedge, a lever, an inclined plane, a screw, a wheel & axel, and a pulley.
  

Thanks for reading! As always, please contact me with any questions, comments, or feedback.

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