Week of November 28, 2016

Students learning how hot and cold water react together during Science.

Highlights from Last Week:
Even though we had a short week last week, we still worked hard on our learning. Students finished up their personal narratives, experimented with hot and cold water, compared decimals, and discussed hypothetical endings of a story. 

One of the most exciting highlights was our launch of Science. Students investigated what happens when you combine hot water with cold water by designing their own experiment. To everyone's amazement, they could clearly see a reaction --hot water rose up, cold water sunk down. We began applying that concept to weather, but Thanksgiving cut us off!

On Wednesday, we crafted our class letter to UNICEF to accompany our donation toward helping the children of Syria. We were so excited to send off $1,326 ($100 of which was donated online). What an amazing charitable effort students committed to. I am in awe! We know our donation is small in comparison to the help that's needed, but we hope our efforts made a difference.

What We Didn't Get To:

• In Math: Adding & Subtracting Decimals.
• In Science: Uneven heating of earth.
• In Writing: Narrative Share.

This Week's Plan


Upcoming Special Events: ​​

• Monday, Teacher Professional Day --No school for kids (lucky!)
• Wednesday, Early Release 

Special Activities:

• DARE Class --Last class this week!
• The Kimball Class Newsletter --The deadline is Thursday for students to submit their next section.

Math:
Decimal Operations.​

• Round Decimals --To a given place value.
• Adding and Subtracting Decimals –Students will learn how to add and subtract decimals using models and the standard algorithm.
• Decimal Patterns --Through an open response where students must explain their thinking is step-by-step detail.

Reading:
Close Reading.

• Character Analysis --We'll read "Stray" by Cynthia Rylant this week and meet in groups to discuss one of the characters and his motivations.
• Teacher Read Aloud --We're reading There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. We're getting close to the end! As I read, I model fluent reading and literary analysis skills.

Writing:
Finish Personal Narrative Writing.​​ Begin Fictional Narrative Writing.

• Narrative Share --We'll celebrate the publishing of our personal narratives with a class share of our favorite excerpts.
• Ideas for Fiction --How to brainstorm scenarios and characters for a fictional narrative.
• Developing Believable Characters --How to give characters realistic features, as well as external and internal struggles.
• Personal Narrative Assessment --Students will go through the writing process to write an on-demand personal narrative in 50 minutes, showing off their new skills. We'll compare these stories to their initial on-demand narrative from before the Unit.

Social Studies:
We switch to Science now.

Science:
Weather and Climate. 

• Why Weather? --We will continue our study of weather by investigating its causes, conducting experiments to explain the uneven heating of the earth and convection currents.

Homework:
Please check the Homework page for more details. There is no new at-home blog this week.

1. Decision Making with DARE Homework Project -due Wednesday, Dec 7
2. Read 25 minutes at home per day and log the title, author, and time in the planner.
3. There will be a math page for homework each night.
4. Students should finish on their segment for the class newsletter by Thursday.

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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.