Happy Friday!
Our students returned from winter break refreshed and ready to learn! We “hit the ground running” last Tuesday, and have been busy ever since! Although we have experienced a number of indoor recess days since returning from break, we are hopeful that the weather will begin to cooperate soon! Please be sure that each day your child is equipped with the appropriate cold weather gear to brave the elements!
B-r-r-r-r!
Here is what we’ve been working on for the past several weeks:
Literacy
This week we finished reading our science fiction novel, George’s Secret Key to the Universe by authors Lucy Hawking and her famous father Stephen Hawking. Our students absolutely loved this story! Not only did it have an engaging storyline, but it was replete with factual information about space! Throughout the book we worked on skills such as point-of-view, comparing and contrasting, as well as quoting accurately from the text. Many students have even expressed an interest in reading other books in the series on their own! The local library is a great resource for finding the other titles in this series! We will continue to read other fiction and nonfiction books and poems with a space theme in the coming weeks.
Writing
We are in the final stages of completing our science fiction narrative stories. There has been an incredible amount of enthusiasm surrounding this writing project and the results have been fantastic! Many students have incorporated elements of time travel, scientific discovery, and futuristic events into their stories. Students have really enjoyed experimenting with this genre! Our next writing project will involve using an I-PAD app called “Comic Life” where students will have the opportunity to transform their stories into comic strips!
Math
This week we completed unit 3 with our assessment. Included on this test were targets that focused on the addition and subtraction of fractions, as well as order of operations. We enjoyed playing an interactive game of KAHOOT in order to review our fraction skills! Next week will begin our new unit. We will start with interpreting fractions as division . After that, we will move on to multiplying fractions.
Social Studies
We have been finishing up our learning about the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance, and will now begin to focus on the liberties that we are fortunate to enjoy in our country. As a part of this learning, we will learn about other parts of the world where such liberties are limited.
Science
Last week we started our new unit in science which focuses on the Earth, Moon and the stars. It ties in nicely with all of our work in literacy involving science fiction! Our recent focus has been on learning all about gravity! We did a fun investigation where we dropped items of differing weights and compositions to hypothesize how gravity affected their descent to the ground! We learned that the weight of two objects does not affect how fast dropped items will travel to the ground, but that the atmosphere and air resistance plays a role. We watched a video of a car and a tire being dropped from the same height and observed that they hit the ground at exactly the same time! This was not the outcome many of the students had predicted!
Enjoy your long weekend!
Upcoming Events
**Monday, January 16—No School MLKing, Jr. Day
**Thursday, January 19-4th/5th Grade Orchestra Concert @ 7:00 at Twin Groves
**Thursday, January 19-4th/5th Grade Orchestra Concert @ 7:00 at Twin Groves
**Tuesday, Jan. 31—PTO Special Lunch, Early release @ 2:00
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