Last week was a very busy week. The highlight was definitely making solar ovens and testing them out by cooking s'mores. It was amazing to watch the kiddos plan, collaborate, and create their solar ovens, (check my website for photos). They were all so excited to take the boxes outside, but even more excited to eat the s'mores. Can you believe the temperature inside most of the solar ovens was about 120 degrees after being outside in the sun for a little over an hour! Just enough time for the chocolate to melt and the marshmallow to get a bit gooey. Planning & Creating Solar Ovens to Learn about Heat Energy Some other exciting news is that we officially started our PBL on Friday! I am so excited about our topic, conservation, as I am a huge advocate for saving the earth. For an introduction to our project, I brought in a collection of trash, (don't worry, there was nothing yucky or dirty involved), for the students to sort into categories. I wanted them to notice how much plastic trash I had from just a few days of collecting. We discussed which items could be recycled, (almost all of them could since I didn't have yucky trash), and where they might go if they weren't recycled. Then we read part of a book called The Human Footprint,a book created by National Geographic that shows estimates of the amount various items are used by the average American. We were shocked to find out the average baby goes through over 3,700 diapers! Hopefully, the kiddos started thinking about how much trash we generate on a regular basis. Here's a glimpse of what we are learning this week... Classroom News Week of October 6-10 Reading: This week we'll focus on making inferences and elements of fiction. We'll also review strategies already learned this year as we read our Time for Kids magazine. Writing: We'll continue to write and draft personal narratives. Students will learn to sequence a story using a timeline and we'll practice writing strong leads. Also, students will work on capitalization and punctuation. Science: It's time to wrap up our energy unit and begin matter. We'll conduct our last investigation on mechanical energy, (this concept will be included in our matter unit as well), by making two different sized roto-copters. Students will have a test on energy this Wednesday. We'll review in class, however students may want to do the virtual investigation on Stemscopes as a review. I'll provide you with more information about that in another email. Math: Students will continue to develop efficient strategies for solving multi-step addition and subtraction problems. Additionally, we'll practice subtraction with regrouping and continue to work on rounding. This will be our last week for this unit. Next week we'll review and take our first math test which will cover place value, rounding, addition, and subtraction. I'll send a review sheet home later in the week. Upcoming Events We have two presentations this week, a Geography Gameshow and a science demonstration. Friday, October 10th- Cookout at our regular lunch time, 11:30 Monday, October 13th- Student holiday Coming up in November...International Children's Week
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
November 2019
Mrs. Swyers3rd Grade Teacher |