Recap and What's Coming

  

Marshmallow Challenge

We had a very busy first few weeks of school!  We are still working on a means of communication through our school website for each of our teacher portfolios.  Look forward to this blog being linked to my class portfolio asap! 

Meeting our K/1 buddies

Our YMCA Teambuilding Campout was a huge success.  So many lessons were learned and transformations made.  Students accomplished things they did not know they were capable of doing.  The experience truly brought our class community closer through trust, responsibility, respect and fun!

This coming week we will concentrate on honing our social skills by practicing transition times and routines.  Because our class is large, it takes quite a bit of time to transition from room to room or subject to subject.  We will be coming up with techniques to better utilize our school time together.

We will also practice effective critique as we will be editing and helping others create their best work throughout the year.  Critique is best when it is Kind, Helpful and Specific.

Lego Ducks and Diversity

We will continue our Diversity in the Community Project, which is centered around the questions, "How do differences enhance community?" and "How can we use our differences to enhance our community?" We are exploring these questions through  reading Lord of the Flies, various writing activities, creating poetry, looking at current events and discussing how diversity can help or harm a community.  We will edit our Walk a Mile in My Shoes poems(click here for example and poem template) and discuss our own diverse traits and feelings.  The poems will transform into a beautiful piece of art in the next week or so.  We will also investigate compassion and how it relates to our class community as well as the world around us.

Our math program includes the Connected Mathematics 3 (CMP3) curriculum, a text and online based program that uses hands on activities to explore algebra concepts.  We will also use MathXL, an online program connected to CMP3,  and continue with ST Math. During our first unit on Thinking With Mathematical Models, we investigate linear and inverse variation class.  So far we have been exploring data patterns by investigating how bridge length and strength are related.   Students will determine rate of change from these investigations. They will learn how to take data from a table and a graph to predict rates of change and determine whether a system is linear or nonlinear.

Linear relationships: Bridge Building

                   




We learned about the Engineering Design Process and compared it to the Scientific Method.

Students built Starburst Arches and created Rube Goldberg Contraptions that are to be completed this coming Tuesday. Click here for the assignment specifications.

Engineering Design and Starburst Arches

For information about more science, follow Wes' blog in my "links I like" section to the right of this post --->