Weekly Update 12/14

Science,
This week in science we continued to work on F.L.A.S.H. with some very good conversation on Self-Esteem and Gender Roles. There have also been some good questions under in all the lesson categories and I encourage you to talk to your students about what they have been learning. There have also been a few questions that I have not answered because they don't fall under the F.L.A.S.H. curriculum but I have encourages students to talk to their families.

WRITING

This week in writing the students continued to work on short stories.  The deadline for turning in their stories is January 25^th.  All students will be participating in the short story contest “Write Out of this World” sponsored by EMP.  The word count range for the contest is 200-2,000 words.  The word count range for me is 1,500 words.  This is a RANGE.  I’ve told the kids that I will accept less (and just a little more). They should tell their stories using the number of words that makes sense to tell a good story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end.  The stories need to have rising action, a climax, and a conclusion.  They are doing the bulk of this work in class.  They’ve had access to laptops nearly every day and plenty of time to write.  Every day we focus on a different aspect of short story writing.  In the past few weeks we’ve covered character, building suspense by asking good questions, writing good dialogue, and plotting.

Social Studies
This week we learned about the lasting impact of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. We prepared presentations to share with the other classrooms and wrote birthday cards to send to the King Center in Atlanta. This Monday students are encouraged to have a Day On not a day off. There are many opportuni-ties for service around the Seattle area. https://www.uwkc.org/events/mlk-day-of-service/

Service can be formal, like helping out at a food bank or simple like picking up trash in your neighborhood.

Students are also working on posters that outline some of the effects of explorers on the world or some of the regions of Native Americans and how they were effect by exploration. The goal for this is to understand the effects each had on each other and make connections between the New World and the Old World.

Math
This week students moved on to solving 2 step equations. They learned the necessity of working backwards and using the property of equality. Story problems were a challenge but we will keep working on our decoding skills! Next week we will take a short mid chapter assessment.

P.E.
We will begin our bicycling unit January 19th through February 5th. Cascade Bicycling Club will bring us bikes and helmets to use for 3 weeks. We hope to have all students riding bikes at the end of our unit. Students do not need to bring their bikes, they are provided. If your child has a helmet they want to bring they can but need to leave in their locker because of confusion with the helmets provided from the bike club, and the hel-mets we use for unicycling, we don’t want any students losing their helmets. We are excited for the next 3 weeks to teach students how to ride a bike and teach them about safety when riding around their neighborhood.