Week of February 4-8

Upcoming Events:
No School Friday Feb 15  and Monday Feb 18:  Presidents Weekend

Sacramento Trip Update:  Trip dates have been finalized.  Thur May 16 - Fri May 24.  First payments of $75 is due February 28.

Our first fieldtrip on a bus!

 Mira Mar Landfill Field Trip:
We were lucky to tag along with the 5th graders on a bus tour through Miramar Landfill to learn more about our personal trash and recycling habits.  Since our school is working toward sustainability and minimizing our consumption, this field trip got us thinking about what we could do in our school as well as home to work toward zero waste.
Back at school we had a recycling relay to test our knowledge of the difference between trash and recyclables.









In Math this week, PreAlgebra has been reviewing fraction addition and subtraction skills.  We practiced GCFs, LCMs and LCDs. We won't spent too much longer on this as it is a review of past years skills.  I found that many students in the class have not mastered operations with fractions so it is more important to me that this skill is practiced before moving on to other concepts that build on prior knowledge. (practice problems are on www.tenmarks.com  )
Language of math words and phrases students should know  for quiz on Tuesday are: factor, prime factorization, greatest common factor, least common multiple, least common denominator, equivalent fraction.

In Algebra, students learned about polynomials.  They found that expressions have first and last names such as x +1 is a linear binomial and x2 + 3x + 4 is a quadratic trinomial .  We learned how to add, subtract and multiply polynomials.  I introduced the FOIL method for multiplying two linear binomials together:
Ask your student how to multiply these two expressions together:  (x+5)(x+2)
Language of math words and phrases students should know for quiz on Tuesday are:  polynomial, term, degree, FOIL method.  

                           


Meanwhile, in science, we needed to prepare "blood" spatters to help us with our Murder Mystery. Science terms: adhesion, cohesion, surface tension and viscosity helped us to understand how fluids act on different surfaces and at different angles.  Our prepared blood spatters will be used next week along with a small lesson in geometry to find the angle of impact and possible position of our victim when foul play occurred  at the crime scene.