Science

This week in science we concluded our engineering unit.  The students should of complete their reflective questions on the tower prototype on page 12 of their cognitive science notebook.

In addition they completed a Summative assessment of the engineering method by writing a report to the city planner about a bridge they plan to build.  They included terms like form, structure, reinforcement,  model, design, prototype, collaboration, infer, observe, evidence,  and engineering design process.

We also started a new unit on thermal energy.  Our driving question is What causes feelings of hot and cold?

NWEA score reports went home and the students used the reports to fill out the “My Science Learning Plan” portion of their planner.

Math

This week the students took a bellwork quiz on ratio, prime numbers, greatest common factor(GCF), and the divisibility rules.  We also introduced using the GCF to simplify fractions.

The program we are piloting has arrived.  In class everyone logged on to the ebook.  They can access the online book through my blog.  There is a link on the side of the page under “class link”  they just have to  sign on with google (A RED RECTANGLE).  A letter went home that should be returned if your child does not have access to the internet.

The student worked through a scavenger hunt to help familiarize them with how the book is set up.  There are math notes at the end of every section.  They can also find these in the core connections course 1 toolkit.  They will be receiving them on Monday.  The focus of the first chapter is to introduce some of the big concepts of the math course, such as organizing data and using mathematical reasoning to make predictions.   They will develop several ways to represent (or show) mathematical ideas.  They will represent ideas using numbers, and symbols, diagrams, words, and various kinds of tables.