Saturday, September 8, 2012

Week 2 Update


Thank you to all of those who were able to attend Back To School Night, we enjoyed sharing our vision for the year and getting to know each of you a little bit better! For those of you who were unable to make it, we will send any information and paperwork that was handed out at BTSN in this weeks Thursday folder.

In math this week, we started unit 1 by exploring lines, rays, line segments, angles, and polygons.  We used our time reviewing these geometric terms to set the expectations for note taking and routines in math.  On Friday, we had our first "Math Madness" day, which will happen every Friday.  It is our way of creating math fluency in basic math skills and work more intensely with any student that needs more assistance or challenges in the weeks topics.  We set Math Madness up in stations that the kids move through.  This week on the Promethean Board this week we played Kakooma, which if you are not familiar, is a great math puzzle that mixes problem solving, fluency, and skill.  On the computers, we played an array of games on www.multiplication.com.

In science, we discussed what it means to be a scientist and do science.  In Thursday we did our first group experiment.  We used heat and the change in air pressure to cause an egg to slip through a small hole in a bottle.  We watched Steve Spangler preform the experiment in the Promethean Board and the kids recorded their observations, asked questions and drew conclusions.  After everyone was done, we joined Ms. Grant's class outside and did the experiment together, it was a great hit!!!

On Friday, we took the opportunity to have a community meeting about autism.  We watched two stories of two different kids who have autism, but on opposite ends of the spectrum, one savant and the other non-verbal.  Then as a class, we discussed what we think autism is, who has autism, and how we can show our autistic friends empathy.  To conclude the meeting we discussed how we should treat all classmates with the same level of respect, and that we all have strengths ans challenges, which is what makes us all so special.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! The kids have no homework from me this weekend!

Reminder: no school Friday

1 comment: