Homework:

Mme Shelli’s Class: Math review homework this week.  Students should bring it to school each day for correction & discussion.

Mme Jana’s Class:  We have 12 new French vocabulary words for homework this week. We’re going to work on adverbs. We’ve been working on adjectives all year, but if you can talk about adverbs at home, that will help support understanding their use in French. Here is the homework: 5 au 9 mars 2018 Vocab

Important Dates:

Thursday & Friday, March 15 & 16         Science Fair!

March 31- April 2      Spring Break- No School

Mme Jana’s News 

FLA (French Language Arts): We began a new “J’observe…” this week, which many students have already completed, of a male lion yawning. I asked the kids to write about why they thought the lion was yawning, and after I explained that I wanted more than than “He is yawning because he is tired,” (Il baille parce qu’il est fatigué.) we got some really creative and hysterical answers. Their writing is getting very impressive! 

As your students may have told you, our combined 4th/5h grade classes didn’t work out this week because of a 5th grade glitch, so we had two to three (Readers Theatre) Lecture théâtrale groups do in-class practice performances for their peers. It was a little nerve-wracking for some, and a learning experience for us all. We have some more practice to do before we share with you, but keep tuned!

We have also begun doing dictations (les dictées) which are short (4-5 sentences) and use words that we think they should be able to write. So, on Monday, we’ll do a new one cold, then Tuesday or Wednesday, we’ll write the whole thing out together in our journals with full explanations, then on Friday, we do that same dictée again. The goal is to help them with finding meaning, spelling, and recognizing which letters or groups of letters in French make which sounds. We’re noticing some patterns and will be able to work with specific groups of students on specific sounds and words.

Sciences: We continue to work in our new unit, La terre, les pierres, et les formes du relief, aka Soils, Rocks and Landforms.We worked on chemical weathering (l’usure chimique) this week, mimicking acid rain and making the whole classroom smell strongly of vinegar while it evaporates. The kids described four kinds of rock, basalt (le basalte), limestone (le calcaire), marble (le marbre) and sandstone (le grès), then watched what happened as we poured vinegar over each one and saw a reaction between some of the stones and the vinegar. We left them overnight, then poured the solutions into shallow dishes to evaporate (with a just vinegar control sample), then on Monday, we’ll see what kind of products are in the dishes. We’ll get to draw and talk about chemical reactions and crystals and calcite! Geeky heaven! Next, we’ll do some more experiments with calcite, then we’ll examine our school soils, then move on to landforms!


Mme Shelli’s News

ELA:  In reading/social studies, we’re reading a chapter book called Lewis & Clark, in Their Own Words by George Sullivan.  We are comparing the book  to excerpts from the Ken Burns documentary about the Lewis & Clark Expedition while they discuss this significant time in Oregon & U.S. history. Students usually find the adventure very interesting and start to enjoy learning history in this unit.  At the same time, they begin to realize how coming of westerners to Oregon impacted Native American communities.   To make history more fun, last week students tried writing with a rudimentary quill pen like Lewis & Clark & this week will try to communicate in Native American sign language. 

Math: We continue multiplicative comparison with measurement.  Students will solve problems like:

“The bucket is eight times bigger than a quart container.  What is the capacity of the bucket?”

“Sam ran 1200 meters.  This is 20 times farther than Joe walked.  How far did Joe walk?” 

OR

“If we need to order food for 924 people, how many packages of hot dogs & buns will we need to order?” See more of these multiple step problems in our current math unit at this link.