Upcoming Events
- Spring conferences are coming up Feb 12th - 15th. Your student should have brought home on Friday or today a permission form which indicates whether we suggest your student has a conference or not. Of course, anyone interested may sign up for a conference. The easiest way to sign up is to fill out a time slot yourself in this online spreadsheet. If that does not work then we will have students call to schedule during the school day. The signed conference permission slip will be due on Thursday for all students. Let me know if you have any questions.
- Teacher work day (no students) on this Friday February 2nd.
- We have a field trip to the landfill and Hammonds candy factory to learn about the product lifecycle on February 27th.
Math (Wagner):
Topics = This week we're starting our 5th unit on geometry. Many students may breath a sigh of relief that we're done with our longest unit, algebra. =) We'll start off with a review of area, perimeter, and shapes on a coordinate plane. We'll then move on to solving for missing supplementary, complementary, and intersecting angles.
Essential Questions = How do you find points on a coordinate plane? What is a supplementary angle? What about a complementary angle?
IXL skills = IXL W.13 Find the measures of complementary, supplementary, vertical, and adjacent angles
Reading/Writing (Piza):
Topics = In reading, we are moving on from Extraction to Production of goods. We will be reading arguments about how production of goods affects our lives. We will continue to consider how an author constructs their argument, the structure of their writing and the purpose of their work. In writing, we are wrapping up the "Case of the Dead Musician". As students continue to hone their argument skills with these mysteries, we will work our way up to a more complicated research-based argument that requires multiple sources to properly answer their question. In the world of Vocabulary, we continue to build our knowledge of Greek and Latin roots
Essential Questions = Feel free to talk with you child about production related connections in life e.g." your uncle works at the car factory". These connection will help students explore the multi-faceted relationship our economy has with our present factory system.
Social Studies (Eaton-Stern):
Topics =This week we'll be looking at the conflicts of cultures that defined the Silk Road - wars, Medieval Europe, the Golden Age of Islam, and Genghis Khan's Golden Horde.
Essential Questions = How does war help to push technological advances forward? How can cultures that are very different learn from each other?
Education for Sustainability (EfS, Wagner)
Topics = We're finishing our presentations on climate change Monday/Tuesday. On Tuesday the students will be sharing their projects with 4th graders who have also been working on a climate change unit. On Wednesday/Thursday we are starting our unit on product life cycle called buy, use, toss.
Essential Questions = How did it go sharing your work with 4th graders? What sorts of questions did they ask? What was your response?