- Choose a focused topic
- Find relevant and reliable resources
- Learn how to take information from sources that supports a focusing question, and put it in their own words (note taking)
- Write an effective introduction and conclusion
- Write detailed paragraphs for the body of the paper with topic sentences and a variety of linking/transitional strategies
- Follow Bibliography format to cite resources
Students are engaged in a unit focused on report writing. They will work in small groups to write a report focused on butterflies, and then each student will choose a topic and write their own report. The culminating activity for this unit will be utilizing the final report to create a children's book. Throughout this unit students will:
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5th Grade Math: Delving into double digit by double digit multiplication, students worked with different strategies that they learned last year and worked to make those strategies more efficient. Don't worry, we'll be getting to the standard algorithm shortly, but please hold off on showing it to them. We have a few more steps to take in order to build understanding around what's going on in the process.
6th Grade Math: Working with greatest common factor (GCF) and lowest common multiple (LCM), students strove to determine when either of these were important to use in order to solve problems. They took a quiz on Friday to demonstrate their understanding. Science: The week started with a rousing ecosystem game that attempted to simulate a closed ecosystem. There are some photos on the science page that you should check out. Then we simulated a food web as you can see in the photos below. On Friday, we ran a computer simulation of a food web. Lots of questions you can ask your kids about this. Students have been learning about the elements of a personal narrative, and have started brainstorming and planning for their own narrative. We have read several examples, and have discussed plot structure, beginning/introduction, turning points, topic sentences, leads, transition words, emotions & feelings, and ending/resolution.
Elements of a Personal Narrative
For social studies, students have been learning about early humans. We started with reading a book about Otzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy, in the Tyrolean Alps. Two German hikers discovered Otzi while hiking in 1991. The book explains the scientific theories of how the Iceman might have lived, survived, and died. As we learned about Otzi, students developed their own theories about his life and death. We have also started learning about the various human species; Australopithecines, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal, Homo Sapien, and Cro-Magnons. We have learned about the origin and meaning of each species name, where they lived and other important facts (tools, language, brain size, etc.). 5th Grade Math: They have been working with arrays and determining how to represent multiplication equations with those arrays. They have also been solving number puzzles with one clue and two clues and began with four clues on Friday. Ask them about the difference between multiples and factors.
6th Grade Math: They have been working with sorting through the vocabulary of numbers - prime, composite, square, factors, multiples. They learned two games which are available online if you'd like to play them at home. They can be found on the math page of this website. Science: We began our unit on ecosystems. Our big question is around wolves in Yellowstone National Park. The focus is how different things can impact an ecosystem. We began with an exploration of the animal kingdom. Something to discuss with your child is how humans impact our ecosystem. |
Students & TeachersMusings by Members of the 5th & 6th grader classrooms of the Fayston Elementary School Archives
November 2019
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