I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend.
A few quick reminders:
· Tomorrow is a Day 3.
· The hot lunch site is now open for November! The special this month is chicken stir fry, which is available every Friday. Please DO NOT order lunch for Thursday, November 21st as we are going on a field trip that day! The lunch site will close October 30th at 3:00 p.m. and payments will be due by November 6th.
· Aftercare invoices for the month of September have come out and were due Tuesday, October 15th, 2019. Any questions can be directed to Ms. Chiappetta at echiappetta@stjudesacademy.com
· Casual day forms were sent home and should be sent back signed with $20 for anyone participating. These are due by Friday, October 25th, 2019.
Inquiry into Math – Today, we wrote our final unit test for our second math unit, Ratio and Rate.
French – Right after this, we had French with Mme. Stella, which you can read about on her blog (https://stjudesfrench-stella.blogspot.com).
Inquiry into Language – After lunch, we sat in our literature circle groups and had a discussion about chapter sixteen. Every day I will be sitting down with a different group to hear these discussions. A reminder of the roles:
1. The discussion director comes up with insightful questions that will fuel discussion in the group.
2. The literary luminary chooses important passages for the group to read and discuss.
3. The connector makes connections between their own lives and the book (i.e. movies, other books they’ve read, real events, the current UOI, etc.)
4. The illustrator/mapper creates an illustration (i.e. comic, picture, mind map, etc.) based on what they felt during the chapter for the group to discuss.
5. The word wizard chooses 3 words that were interesting or new for everyone to discuss as a group.
After our literature circles, we read through our limericks as a class. We will be starting a new type of poem this week – Before Midnight poems. We began looking at these today, and this is what we came up with.
Inquiry into Air – At the end of the day, we started our new unit of inquiry, air & flight. We started by examining our topic, central idea, and lines of inquiry. We also briefly discussed our summative task. The overall idea is that students will create their own flying device using what they had learned, and then demonstrate this in our air show!
After this discussion, we examined the definitions for both air and flight. Air is an invisible gaseous substance surrounding the earth. Flight is movement through the air by the aid of wings, or by the force of wind, or by other impulse. After we looked at these definitions, we brainstormed words and pictures that we associate with air and flight.
At the end of the day, we did a class brainstorm for our KWL chart (What I Know, What I Want to Know, What I Learned). Students completed a class brainstorm sharing what they already know about flight and air, and what they would like to learn throughout the unit.
Tomorrow, we will begin to examine the properties of air through a series of experiments.
Science Fair – At the end of the day, students worked on their cars for Science Fair.
Homework:
We do our best to complete work in class. In the event this is not possible, it will go home for homework.
As always, please feel free to email me with any questions.
Mr. Conte
