Hello!
I hope everyone had a nice long weekend. I have gotten almost all of the folders back. If you haven’t returned your folder yet, and would still like an interview, send me an email to arrange one.
In math this week we reviewed three strategies to multiply single digits. The first takes ‘groups of’ amd makes arrays. So 3×5 is 3 rows of dots, and 5 columns. We then practice my favorite strategy, which is to break up harder numbers into easier ones, and multiply. So 7×6, break 7 into 5 and 2, multiply both pieces by 6 (5×6=30, 2×6=12), then add the pieces back to make 42. We turned this strategy up a notch by doing numbers like 14×7 (10×7 and 4×7). We finally learned how skip counting can help multiply, so 6×4 is 6, 12, 18, 24. We will have a quiz Monday afternoon on these strategies.
In social studies this week we learned about what aquaculture and fish farms do. We discussed the positive and negatives of fish farms, and students worked on their project. We also learned about the thre Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Students spent some time reflecting on how they can use the three Rs at home. Finally we started to write our natural resource essay on a specific topic: clear cutting, oil pipelines, mining, and fish farms. We will work on these more next week.
In science we learned all about lever and fulcrum. We experimented with the placement of a fulcrum, and how it makes it easier to lift when it is closer to the load. Students were quite amazed at the change in effort needed to lift an object. We then played around with the most popular lever and fulcrum, according to grade 5 students, which is the catapult. We spend the rest of the week building catapults, and practiced shooting them Friday. We will have one more test shoot on Monday before they come home.
In french this week we needed to do a little catch up, so we learned about the days of the week, months of the year, how to say our name, and age in french. We practices Je m’appelle our name, je suis our gender, and j’ai our age.
Next week we have a short one, with Thursday being a half day, and Friday a Pro D. On Monday we have the Book fair, and students will be given $10 credit for books once again. We will review multiplying with 0s, and estimate multiples in math, write our resource essay and do a resource test in social studies, learn about the screw and wedge in science, and practice numbers to 10 in french. Should be a busy week finishing off our socials unit, here is hoping we can get it done.
Have a good weekend, and see you Monday.