Content Infomation - Snider/Miller

Below we will share specific information about what is happening in each content area.
Over the course of the year we will look back and forward to help provide some context for what your student is doing.

You are encourage to look at their assignment notebook (when they arrive!) to better understand their homework responsibilities too!

Big ideas Maths - 6th 

Students have one Activity and Lesson left to complete in Chapter 1. Their first end of chapter assessment will happen on Friday, October 7th. Students will review on Thursday, during class and be expected to work through a practice assessment as homework, on Thursday evening. 

This first chapter, Numerical Expressions and Factors focuses on reviewing long division, US traditional multiplication, prime and composite numbers, factors, least common multiples, and greatest common factors. By looking in the textbook you can see the structure of the Big Ideas curriculum is quite traditional. Problems and examples are presented in the textbook and then students are asked to work through similar problems, in their notebook. Many students are still working on showing and organizing their work in their notebooks in a way that allows them to see and return to their process. 

Reading

All students are using their reading log to track the amount of time they read, daily. Students are expected to read 30 minutes a day, six days a week for a minimum of 720 minutes per month.

On Monday students will share the total number of minutes they read in September (starting on the 9th of the month) and the number of books they read.

Running records will be complete by Thursday. We will then shift to a study of characters across different fiction books. 

SOcial studies || Science

Populations and Ecosystems is the first unit. Students have learned to apply these vocabulary terms: ecosystems, biological, organism, abiotic, biotic, individual, population, community, producer, consumer, energy transfer and food chain.

Overall students did a wonderful job demonstrating their understanding of the terms and concepts on Friday's quiz. 

This next week students will learn about food webs, trophic levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers, herbivore, carnivore and omnivore. On Friday, October 14 students will have a unit assessment before transitioning to social studies. 

Everyday Mathematics - 5th

Everyday Math students will take the Unit 1 (Area & Volume) Assessment on Monday of this week. They will be expected to share their graded assessment and feedback sheet with an adult at home and correct any problems that were solved incorrectly later on this week. Then they will preview concepts and skills related to Unit 2: Whole Number Place Value and Operations. Students will bring home the Unit 2 Family Letter on Thursday and receive a new Home Link packet on Friday. 

Here's a link to the Everyday Math at Home website which includes downloadable copies of the Family Letter and Home Links for Unit 1 as well as selected solutions for each Home Link.

Writing

Writers in MAC 3 continued to explore parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions) last week as they worked in partnerships to draft sentences and short stories. This week students will revise their 3-4 sentence stories with an eye towards word choice. Then they'll type their short stories on a Google Doc and create a system for coding their text by part of speech. Next week students will begin prewriting and brainstorming a personal narrative. 

Crew

Last week students worked in groups to identify what each PARK (perseverance, advocacy, responsibility, and kindness) and CARE (collaboration, adventure, reflection, and equity) trait looks like, sounds like, and feels like. This week students will prepare for the annual Walk to School celebration by creating thank you cards to show gratitude to our Lake Bluff crossing guards. They'll end the week reflecting on glows (what's going well) and grows (what can we work on) to make our classroom and school a better place for our entire community. 

Second Step / SEL

Last week students shared strategies to try when they are having trouble learning something new. They discussed a formula for powerful learning that consisted of hard work, good strategies, and help from others. Second Step learning will resume next week Wednesday (10/12) with Lesson 4: Making Goals Specific. 

Here is the website for our Lake Bluff newspaper, The Beagle Times. We encourage you to check out!

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Just a few photos...

First day of school, unpacking supplies.

Looking to the south side of the classroom.