Weekly Reminders 1/14/13

Rockhopper Weekly Reminders
January 14-18


Mark Your Calendars:

Monday, January 21st: Martin Luther King Jr. Day (No School)
Wednesday, January 23rd: PSCO Meeting at 6:30 p.m.
Friday, January 25th: Spirit Day- Twin Day!


Curriculum Flash!
Language Arts:
Our current core literature book is By the Great Horn Spoon, by Sid Fleischman. We’ll be doing a number of large and small activities designed to tie together the ideas presented in the book. Center activities range from Google Earth exploration of sea routes to figurative language study in our novel and other Gold Rush poetry to vocabulary development based on chapter content. We’ll also be keeping a journal of the story developments from the perspective of one of the main characters- Praiseworthy or Jack. In addition, there will be a peer response writing task tied into the opening themes of the book.

Writer’s Workshop on Friday afternoons also resumes its prominent place in our planning. We’ll start developing our formal response to literature skills during this block of time. Focus areas initially will be discussion of themes in different short stories, chapters, or Gold Rush era picture books, description of character traits, setting details, and beginning plot elements. Personal connections to situations in literature will be necessary to incorporate into effective responses as well.

Math:
4th grade: Fractions, fractions, fractions! The world of fractions contains many interrelated mini-concepts including determining equivalency, finding the lowest common denominator, reducing to simplest form, and comparing and ordering values. We continue this week using manipulatives to understand the formulas associated with these concepts. Parents, please ask your child to model for you the many skills they are building in fractions this week!


5th grade: This week, students will transfer the conceptual information that they’ve learned about equivalent fractions from the concrete to the abstract. Students will be adding, subtracting, and comparing fractions with unlike denominators and completing a beautiful fraction quilt.


Social Studies:
Our new unit studying early explorers continues this week with the first European settlers and the study of presidios, missions, and pueblos. Students will be sketching a galleon to be showcased on our classroom walls. We are excited to make the historical connection between the voyages of early California explorers and those who traveled later in search of gold. Our very first chapter of By the Great Horn Spoon! introduces the main characters as stowaways traveling from Boston, around the tip of Cape Horn, headed towards California’s Gold Rush!

Science:
This week our classes use their basic knowledge of circuitry to explore more advanced connections. We’ll begin the week by building a variety of series circuits, and we’ll do trouble-shooting related to this type of circuit as well. Schematic diagrams will be used to record the types of circuits that we create. After reviewing the results of this past week’s I-Check on Wednesday, the students will have an opportunity to build parallel circuits on Thursday. We compare series and parallel circuits at this point, and we’ll think about the potential applications of each type of circuit in the world around us. As always, the textbook readings are primarily used to reinforce our hands-on learning and to expose our students more formally to the vocabulary and descriptive language of circuit design.

CA Trivia:
What object found a place on the CA state flag in 1911 with a grizzly bear?