Week of April 10, 2017

The class loved Emma's Car Table, which she made for her Invention Convention project.

Highlights from Last Week:

On Monday, folks from the middle school visited Pine Hill to provide a sneak preview of foreign languages, band, chorus, schedules, and after school activities. Students enjoyed being immersed in French and Spanish by Madame Egan.

Students took the English Language Arts MCAS in 3 sessions last week. Each session lasted a little less than 2 hours. I hope students felt prepared and confident.

In Science, we learned how energy from the sun passes through organisms in an ecosystem, watching some entertaining videos with many adorable animals. Students then began researching for a new in-class project on ecosystems.

Fractions are pretty much wrapped up. Students got their assessments back on multiplication and division of fractions. The class average was an 89%. We then began exploring Geometry, starting with Polygons, learning to classify them by their properties. I helped students learn how to sort quadrilaterals into a hierarchy by telling them the story of the "Polygon Mansion of Fun." Ask them about it.

Students selected an organization and charitable cause to promote for their year-end Global Citizenship project. As a class, we came up with some great ideas for ways to support our chosen organizations; everything from a bake sale to making posters to raise awareness.


What We Didn't Get To:

• In Writing, we need to wrap up citing our sources for our informational texts and publish them.

This Week's Plan

Upcoming Special Events: ​​​​​

• Talent Show Dress Rehearsals --Tuesday and Wednesday, April 11-12 from 3:00-5:00pm.
• Talent Show --Thursday, April 13th from 6:00-9:00pm.
• April Break --Friday, April 14th thru Sunday, April 23rd.

Special Activities:

• Citizenship Project -Students will meet with 5th graders in other classrooms to share their ideas for supporting their organizations.

Math:
Finish Polygons.​ Begin Volume.

• Polygon Properties Game --We'll practice identifying properties of polygons with a fun game.
• Exploring Volume --Students will get some hands-on experience in investigating volume by filling small boxes with unit cubes.
• Finding Volume --We'll learn what volume is and how it relates to area. Then we'll learn the formula for finding volume (length x width x height).

Reading:
Book Groups and Informational Reading.

• Book Groups & Literary Analysis --We attempt to wrap up some of our book groups this week. We'll learn how to analyze the story structure and character development in order to determine the themes of our books.

Writing:
Finish Informational Writing.​​​

• Publishing --We'll put the finishing touches on our informational writing projects.
• On-Demand --To assess growth, students will write a short informational text in a 50 minute sitting. We'll compare these on-demands with the ones we did at the beginning of the unit to see how much (or little) we improved.

Social Studies:
We've switched to Science.

Science:
Ecosystems.

• Ecosystem Project –Students work in cooperative groups to become experts on an ecosystem of their choice. They conduct research, create an informative presentation, and write a one-page informational text about their ecosystem.

Homework:
Please check the Homework page for more details.

1. Students turn in the "Invention Convention" homework project on Tuesday, April 11th. 
2. Students must write back to their partner's response on Blog #9.
3. Read 25 minutes at home per day and log the title, author, and time in the planner.
4. There will be a math page for homework each night.

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