Week of November 2, 2015

Students sharing ideas for writing.

Highlights from Last Week:
Students enjoyed our Science activities last week. We made a cloud in a bottle using rubbing alcohol to simulate dust in the atmosphere, water, a 1-liter bottle, and a bicycle pump. The “Wow” factor was high! We learned about the causes of storms from Bill Nye the Science Guy, particularly the warm strip of water in the Pacific Ocean called, El Nino.
 
Some students went above and beyond this week to create their own weather instruments. Trisha and Whitney made a rain gauge to measure precipitation. Ryan made an anemometer to measure wind speed. Liana, Caitlin, and August made a barometer to measure atmospheric pressure. It was cool to see these complicated devices made with everyday materials and student ingenuity!

To demonstrate the Water Cycle, students performed interpretive dances, using their creativity to model how water cycles on earth and through its atmosphere. 
 
In the spirit of Halloween, we learned some “scary” math –dividing with 2-digit divisors! Students learned to use their “M.O.M.”s –menu of multiples– to help them make these complicated problems much easier.
 
What we didn't get to:

• In Writing, we spent extra time on generating ideas for personal narratives, so we still have a couple of lessons from last week to tackle.
• We didn’t get to division number stories in Math.
• We have a little more about clouds to cover.

This Week's Plan

Special:

• Author Gregory Mone visits on Tuesday, November 3rd. He is a novelist, science journalist, and speaker. Click here to learn more about him. He will teach students some writing techniques in a workshop.
• Our first completely full week of school –with no early release!

Reading:
Identifying Key Ideas and Details. Book Groups.

• Explicit details and Inferences  –We will look at how to explain what a text says explicitly and compare that with how we draw inferences from the text.
• Evidence in the Text –Students will use their own independent reading as well as our class read aloud to identify evidence in the text to support their thinking.
• Book Groups  –This week we will form guided reading book groups where we will read books at our just-right levels and practice the skills mentioned above.
• Teacher Read Aloud  –There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar. As I read, students turn and talk to share their analyses and evaluations of the characters and plot developments.

Writing:
Personal Narratives.

• Generating Ideas for Personal Narratives –We’ll add to our list of ideas for our stories, thinking about places that matter to us and times we’ve had strong feelings.
• Reliving the Moment –We will practice some strategies to help us see our experience in a step by step way before we write and write in a way that allows readers to experience the moment too.
• Planning Ahead to Capture all of the Details –To think and write about an experience with more depth, we’ll try a narrative planning strategy that is similar to a movie storyboard.
• Reading to Write –To inspire our narrative craft, we will read published personal narratives and get ideas for our own.

Math: 
Estimation and computation.​​

• Division Number Stories and Remainders –We will learn how to turn English into Math and solve real world division problems that involve remainders. We’ll learn what do you do with the remainder depending on the unit.
• Review for an Assessment  –Students will work through concepts on the Unit 2 Study Guide while I meet with small groups to offer support and guided practice.
• Unit 2 Assessment  –Students will need to demonstrate understanding of place value, powers of 10, multi-digit multiplication with both partial products and the standard algorithm, estimation for both multiplication and division, division with both 1-digit and 2-digit divisors, and number stories with remainders for answers.
• Open Response  –We’ll tackle another open response problem and learn how to use specific vocabulary to make our written answers more precise.

Science:
Weather and Climate.

• Cloud Formations –We will read about how the different types of clouds cause our weather.
• Storms –Students will read about how different storms are created, comparing what they read to other media, such as the Bill Nye “Storms” episode and weather reports online.
• Weather and Climate –Students will learn about climate and how weather patterns make up a location’s climate.

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Homework:
Please visit the Homework Page for full details.

• Students have a new Reading Response Blog to respond to.
• There is a new Homework Project called, “What If.”
• There will be a math page or two each night.
• Students should be reading on average 20 minutes each day and logging it in their planners.

Thanks for Reading!
So that's the plan for the week. Please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or feedback. ​

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