March 6, 2016

I can't believe it is already March!  Time has been flying since we came back in January.

Important Dates:

• March 11- Spring pictures
• March 21-25- Spring Break (no school all week)

In reading, we are finishing up our argument unit.  Students have been continuing to read and analzye texts centered around a debatable issue.  We also learned about summarizing non-fiction argument articles.

This week we did our final debates that students had been preparing for with their research group.  This unit allowed students to practice their inferencing skills when reading non-fiction articles. See the post called Class Debates to watch the debates in action!

Below are pictures of the students in their independent book clubs.  These book clubs have really helped reluctant readers get excited about reading!

We also just concluded our argument unit in writing.  Earlier in the quarter, students wrote an argument letter about chocolate milk.  They had to decide if they thought chocolate milk should be allowed in school or not, and they had to back up their argument with facts and evidence from reputable sources.  In the last several weeks, students have been applying what they learned about argument writing to a new argument topic of their choice.  These will be coming home soon.

We have been studying fractions in math.  Our next chapter involves adding and subtracting fractions with common and uncommon denominators.  We are also learning about volume.  

In science, our last unit focused on living things.   We talked about how scientists classify living things into groups based on their similarities.  When learning about animals with backbones, students created a model of a backbone using a pipe cleaner as the spinal cord, pasta pieces as the bones, and gummy candy as the soft disks.  Students had fun trying to bend the backbone with and without the gummy candy to determine why vertebrate animals need the bones and the soft disks. Our new unit will be about space.