Week 5

This week we finished up learning about light and started learning about heat. The kids did really well on our jeopardy review about light.

In math, we talked a lot about equality and how to keep both sides of an equation equal. We used tombs and treasures to balance equations, which was really fun. We also talked a lot about properties of operations and about the distributive property.

In social studies we finished Mesopotamia! The kids loved learning about Hammurabi's code of laws and we even read a little bit about the birth of Judaism. This wee we will be starting Egypt!

We are still working on our personal narratives in writing, and we've been trying to use metacognition as we read. This week we will wrap up metacognition and start on monitoring for meaning.

It's been a great week! Don't forget to read at home! No birthdays this week.

Week 4 (Already?)

I am amazed that we've already survived four weeks of school! It's been a blast so far!

This week we did our benchmarking in reading, and the A-Team was great for their sub (as I knew they would be).

We've been continuing with light in science--reflection and refraction were our big topics of the week. In math we finished talking about exponents and then we had a test. On Friday we started on the Order of Operations, and we came up with our own phrases to help us remember PEMDAS. We've been learning about the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and we even made some cuneiform tablets on Friday. It must have been hard to be a scribe in those days! Finally, in literacy we've been focusing on metacognition. We learned that being aware of and understanding our own thoughts can help us be better readers.

Other news this week:
--Happy Birthday to Makiah this last Friday!
--I sent in the book orders so hopefully those will arrive in the next couple of weeks.