Room 20 Classroom Notes September 30-October 4th

This week, we will have a guest artist working with us for the next five weeks. Michael Wehrli will be working with half of our class at a time for four sessions per week. This week, we will also be vistied by Gregory MacNaughton from Reed College's Cooley Gallery. We will discuss the exhibit we will be going to and prepare ourselves for our journey on Thursday morning from 9:00am-11:30am. We will arrive back at Lewis for lunch. Speaking of guests, next week (October 8th), we will also be working with a musician Aaron Meyer. This week during writing, we will prepare for that musical experience by writing song lyrics about what we have learned so far this year. In math, we will begin a new unit on understanding multi-digit multiplication and division. Since the first unit was an overview, we will not have a unit test. We also started our first multiplication facts quiz last week. Students need to know a fact within a few seconds. Sometimes students think "knowing your math facts" is knowing how to skip count by that number. We started on our two's. If students answer 38 questions within two minutes, they will move on next week to three's. If students do not meet the 38 answers, they will have a week before the next quiz to practice. I will have worksheets, flashcards, and games to help them study. In reading, we did not get to "Thunder Rose" because we got caught up into the final chapters of "Tuck Everlasting." We will read the tall tale of "Thunder Rose." We will also be introduced to "Island of the Blue Dolphins," by the end of the week. We will have another walking field trip to Tideman Station Johnson Creek, which will take place on Wednesday, October 23rd from 9:00-11:30. This will be a scientific field study interacting with and studying water, macro-invertebrates and indicator species (if a certain creature is thriving, it indicates a healthy eco-system), native plant species, and invasive plant species. If your walking field trip permission slips are in, there are no other forms to fill out. October 9th is class pictures. We will be taking pictures at 10:20am. Every Thursday, we will be doing calligraphy. Aside from letter formation, we also started designing our own monograms- a blending of our initials in a creative way. This is a design-based exercise that helps students play with spatial reasoning using their initials. In science, we will continue to work with our Reed friends studying scientific variables and learn about the solar system in class. Homework this week will be: math- Home Connection 10, 11 (possibly 12), writing essay (will go home and be posted on blog), studying the capitals and names of the midwestern states and northeastern states, and "Thunder Rose," spelling pages 5-8 long vowel VCV spelling patterns. Keep viewing the moon!!! In math, homework depends on how far we get. Like most of the week, activities may go as planned, or we might go another direction toward another teachable moment. Thanks for signing up for conferences outside room 20!