December Book Order

The December book order is due this Friday, the 3rd.  Paper copies went home Monday.  You can also purchase books easily online at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs.  Our class activation code is HFRHW. I will close down the purchasing online Friday morning.  Thank you.

Fractions to Decimals to Percents!

This week in math we learned how to convert fractions to decimals and then learned how to convert the decimal to a percent.  We did this both with a calculator and without.  Next week we will polish up our skills of decimals, fractions, and percents.  We finished up our unit on analyzing microscopic items in science and will move onto learning about heredity in the next few weeks.  We learned about the 13 original colonies in social studies and the three regions that made up the 13 colonies.  The next book report will cover a historical fiction book and will be due December 15th.

Cardinal Art

Our class was blessed with another amazing art lesson by volunteers.  After an amazing art history lesson on John Audubon and his first published bird book, students began an artwork of their own.  The focus was one using water colors to create a painting of a cardinal.

Looking at the Micro World

This week and next we are focusing in science on proper usage of a microscope.  Today we viewed a variety of slides and drew a few of our favorites.  Next week we plan on preparing our own slides to view.  In social studies we had a visitor, William Bradford, from the Plymouth Colony visit on Wednesday.  I'm sure it would be an interesting discussion if you asked your child what was learned, as it appeared much knowledge was gained from this experience.  We have been focusing heavily on identifying the main idea in informational text this week and will move onto predicting outcomes next week in reading.  Our next book report will focus on a historical fiction book and will be due the 15th of December.

Solubility and Social Studies

Today in social studies we continued to learn about new colonies that were being established in the New World in the early 1600s.  Today's lesson focused upon the French settlements near present day Quebec.

In science we began a new topic, that of solubility.  Students explored the concept by mixing a variety of items in glasses to discover the differences between mixtures and solutions, including a super saturated solution.

Literature Groups

This week we began our first novel.  We are reading On My Honor, a short chapter book by Marion Bauer.  During reading groups, detailed discussions take place as the students lead the book talk.  We have recently been working on analyzing texts at deeper levels, using Blooms' Taxonomy.  Bloom's Taxanomy involves six levels of questioning and allows students to analye and interpret the readings using both lower and higher order thinking skills. When students are evaluating and judging using higher order thinking skills they are more likely to retain information.  It is also thought that using higher order thinking skills can help achieve the ultimate goal of becoming a lifelong learner.

Students write a question from each level of Bloom's Taxonomy and then answer their own question.  In reading groups, each child chooses a question to pose to the group to contribute to the book discussion.