What a fun week of skating we had. Miss Jenae was at the rink every day, providing the students with lessons on stopping, turning, gliding and improving techniques. We also had the NAX students from the high school helping on the ice to give the kids even more support. A huge THANK YOU to the parents that came to help tie skates and be on the ice with our class! The kids showed tremendous growth in these past 4 days and they can't wait for the next skating week!
We also spent some time this week writing and publishing our second Diary Entry. They chose a topic from the list of topics to write about and composed a paragraph using a topic sentence, 5 detail sentences and a concluding sentence. We will work on illustrating these next week.
We completed our Penguin slideshows and presented them to the class. The students took turns sharing their slides; adding details to their sentences and explaining why they chose the pictures they did. They did a fantastic job!
In Math, we focused on word problems this week. We completed a variety of addition and subtraction word problems to help the students know when to add or subtract. When reading over the word problems, they would highlight key words like "all together", "in all", "how many more" or "how many left". They were even challenged to complete a few multi step word problems. These activities and booklets have been coming home daily this week and the overall marks will be posted on PowerSchool.
In Science we started our new Building Unit following the theme of the Survivor TV show. The kids were assigned "tribes" that they will work together in for the duration of our unit. The tribes each chose a name and were given matching bandannas. They also created a title page. We did a little class activity and talked about what fair testing was. The students learned that a fair test has only one changed variable. Over the course of the unit, the students will be given different challenges to complete and after making individual hypothesis, they will work with their tribe mates to test these hypothesis.
Our first challenge...
We have landed safely near shore and made our way to the closest beach. Ahead of us is a dense jungle and we see a huge storm heading our way, so we decide to make our way to find some shelter. As we reach the edge of the forest, we notice a large crack in the Earth. Logan takes a step forward to take a closer look. It is very deep and looks like it may have been caused by an earthquake. He tells us that he can not even see the bottom. There is also hot lava spewing from the crack. The crack is not too wide, but we definitely can not jump over it. We will need to build something in order to cross onto the other side. We have decided to make a foot bridge out of a piece of wood we see nearby. We need to figure out if bending the wood to make a square frame or bending it into an arch will be stronger. We need to remember that this structure needs to hold each classmate and teacher one by one as we step over the crack.
Using card stock paper, plasticine, unifix cubes and styrofoam plates the tribes each made a hypothesis and tested out the 2 different structures.
After completing the experiment, we concluded that the arch structure was stronger and was able to support more mass because the mass spreads evenly. The square structure had bends which caused it to fold in.
Home Reading!
Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!!!
