Welcome Back to School and the start of a New Year!
The class will start the new year with new units in language arts, math and science.
In reading students will learn about the genre characteristics and text structure of folktales. Before the class starts folktales students will review the genre of historical and realistic fiction. Knowing the genre and text structure of stories will aid reading comprehension. Students will also transfer their learning of summarizing nonfiction text to summarizing fictional stories. This new unit will focus on theme and lessons learned by the characters. The culmination of the unit will be a reader's theater which the class will perform for a younger audience. The purpose of this reader's theater is to ensure the students understand and project to the audience the lesson learned by the character.
In writing students will write a narrative piece in which they learned a lesson. Students will use stories they read in class to help build the background knowledge for this writing performance task.
In math, students will study fractions. Students start with understanding a whole can be divided into equal parts. They will label the fraction parts of a rectangle and discuss the size of such fractions as l/2, l/4, l/8, l/3 and l/6. As they work on this unit they will understand the difference between the numerator and denominator in a fraction.
In science students will study the phases of the moon. They will learn that the moon has 8 phases - New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Last or Third Quarter, and Waning Crescent. Students will be responsible for keeping a moon journal for the month in order to understand these phases. Students will read and learn facts about the moon and compare it to the earth and sun.
Students completed their Native American reports just before the holiday break. Here is an example of the report which a student wrote.
The Plains Native Americans
by Ashley
The Plains Native Americans inhabited a place in the United States called the Great Plains. The Great Plains is in the middle of our country. The Great Plains is west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains. It is north of Mexico and south of Canada. It is a very flat place with almost no trees. This information is about the Plains' location.
The men and women had many jobs. Hunting buffalo was a very important job for the Plains Indian men. The men were also great fighters. Another job was to guard their camp and to make sure other tribes were not going to attack them. Men also made tools like bows and arrows from bones, stone and wood. They taught their sons to hunt. The men had lots of jobs. The women did many jobs too. They tanned buffalo hides and cooked the food for the rest of the family. Another task was to collect berries, wild rice, and turnips. The women made the clothing out of hides. They had to tan the hides to make the clothing. The women taught their daughters to make clothes and cook dinner. The women were very important to their tribe.
Here are some of the foods of the Plains Indians. They ate meat from the buffalo. The meat that could not be eaten right away was made into jerky. Jerky was dried buffalo meat that had been pounded into a powder. Animal fat was added. Blood from the buffalo was put in a soup or made into pudding. The women collected berries and grapes to eat. The men hunted deer, elk, and moose. They also caught and ate little animals such as rabbits, gophers, and prairie chickens. The Plains had a bunch of food!
A tipi was a Plains Indian's home. Here are some facts about it. The women were in charge of the inside of the tipi. The men were in charge of the outside of the tipi. Inside the tipi there was a fire and a hole for smoke to get out. The men painted the outside of the tipi with good deeds they had done. The women got to put the tipi wherever they wanted because they were in charge of it. These are some facts about the Plains Indian homes.
