In Reading and Language Arts, our class began our third novel, “Wink”. This is the story of a 6th grade boy living in present day, Indiana going through radiation therapy for eye cancer. He is also going through all the other awkward stages and events of being a middle school kid. Some of the issues and themes that we have experienced and read about over the past week are: pediatric cancer, puberty, friendship, losing a mother to cancer, middle school crushes, and standing out at school in an awkward way. Despite all of Ross’s life problems, he brought us quite a few chuckles during our class read and discuss sessions. Our Poem of the Week was brought to us by Edna St. Vincent Millay and her piece entitled, “The Courage that My Mother Had”. She taught about how we treasure certain physical items, but ultimately we truly want to embrace values, traditions and character traits. We learned and wrote about how our parents and family instill in us a love of wisdom and character. The Film Clip of the Week came from “A Bug’s Life” and taught us lessons about “Strength in Numbers” and how ants can teach us about being small and mighty. 

Chalkboard Questions of the Week

-What is your favorite subject/topic in Math?

-If you could remove 1 thing from the world, What would it be?

-What are your 3 Favorite Cities You have Visitied?

-What is One thing you wish you were better at in life?

-What is your favorite snack food? 

 

In Social Studies, we had our class “March Madness” team drawing this week. Each student was randomly drawn 6 teams. We researched where our colleges and universities are located in the USA, what is the acceptance rate, colors, and so on. Our class also calculated the strength of our groups of teams and chance of winning the tournament. Our Visual Thinking Strategy of the Week was from NYT “What’s in this Picture?” It presented a small crowd and bride on the Syrian/Israeli border in The Golan Heights. Our class connected the refugee crisis in Syria to their previous novel, “Inside Out and Back Again”. Our class celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by exploring the history of the holiday, the myths of leprechauns, St. Patrick himself and why is this holiday so widely celebrated.  We continued back to studying the African continent and took a tour of beautiful country of South Africa. Our class will be finishing Africa after Spring Break with another challenging round of Kahoot. Ms. Vash returned to our classroom to lead us in a social-emotional reboot to our self-esteem. Our class took certain phrases and reworded them to help us believe in our own abilities. We also reviewed the process and content of our upcoming, Student-Led Conferences.

Reprogramming Our Mind for Healthy Self Outlook

 

Map Location Current Total: 60 (countries or cities)

The Battle of The Bounce!

In Science and Math, our Math Challenges of the week covered: dividing whole numbers by a decimals, measuring angles with protractors across our tables and classroom wide, Algebra, and a first taste of Trigonometry. Math Challenges are intended to give our class a chance to explore and interact with math properties that are higher than their grade level. Our Science experiment this week pair us up to explore engineering and physics. Each team tested 3 different size balls and how their material and gravity affected them in “The Battle of the Bounce”. Our post experiment debrief had us share the accuracy of our hypotheses. We graphed our results and also discussed why certain teams had different results, due to where they completed their experiment in our classroom space.

Measuring Massive Angles

Floor Hockey (Thanks, Coach Medinah!)

 

In Reading and Language Arts, our class began this week with the editing and revising process of our 5 paragraph essay for our novel, “Inside Out and Back Again”. Each one of us had three of our classmates, read and offer positive feedback and one suggestion to improve their essay. We are learning to become stronger writers from not only our own practice, but seeing what our friends create. Over the course of the week, students would also share their essay with me via GoogleDocs, as well as, we met one-on-one to briefly discuss amazing points made in their essay and how to revise some sentences that were a bit stuck. We enhanced our vocabulary skills by playing a few rounds of Prefix and Suffix Bingo. 

Chalkboard Questions of the Week

-Would you rather sail a boat or ride in a hang glider?

-Would you rather do school work as a Group or by Yourself?

-What are your 3 Favorite Video Games of All-Time?

-What are you Proudest of in your life?

-Would you rather be the oldest sibling or the youngest?

 

In Social Studies, we undertook an interesting Data Talk as we examined a graph displaying Men and Women Attending and Achieving Degrees from Associates through Post Graduate from (1971-2017). This lead us to pose two larger, more difficult questions: are more men choosing not to attend college OR are women smarter and filling up more positions at college and universities?  Our 5th graders and I attended the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center Annual Leadership Conference. We joined with over 40 other schools, across 8 states and nearing 250 students to discuss being an Upstander and how we can make a difference in our communities. Our team of leaders posed some excellent questions to the guest speaker, Mr. Derek Rhodes, author of “Jimmy for the City”. Each student represented Plato Academy, our class, their family and themselves with professional and class. I was so proud! We began gathering our Student-Led Conference work to present our parents. Our class reviewed our Writing Journals to find entries of which we were most proud. We also chose Math Journal exercises that we grew in our abilities and confidence. Our class also viewed and studied some of the most inspirational and gifted female athletes ever.

Leadership Conference

How to Spend a 10 Minute Conference Break? GREEK DANCE!

Post Leadership Event Conference Room Business Selfie. (Future Leaders of the World!)

Map Location Current Total: 59 (countries or cities)

In Science and Math, we took on this week in our Math Challenges some new ideas like “Measurement Tag” and reviewed some other topics like Multiplication (3 digit x 3 digit), Comparing Fractions, Algebra, and Division. Measurement Tag was a partnered activity where one student rolled the dice and drew straight line segments equaling the number of inches totalled on their dice. The other student was the “Tagger” had the task of trying to “catch” their classmate by ending their line segment exactly on the same dot location. We created some fascinating shapes and design patterns as students danced across the page. Two of our Math Challenge problems originated from SAT and GMAT prep books and our class absolutely rocked them! Our class was stunned that they had mathematically wrestled with these problems that high school and college students would also have to solve. We watched and learned about the Top 10 Inventions created by women and how this brilliant scientists and engineers shaped our world. Super Science introduced us to the complex world of Fungi and we used that new found knowledge to explore the food web. We were intrigued to see how plants, herbivores omnivores/carnivores are all interconnected in our natural world.

Measurement Tag

 

Mindset Math brought an interesting challenge to us this week as we paired off and studied a progressive growth line of cubes and then translated the images into interpretive line graphs. We noticed patterns within the shapes, as well as, methods to add a numerical value to be studied.  

Mindset Math = Growing Shapes Converted into Numerical Data!

In Reading and Language Arts, we began the rigirious task of crafting a five paragraph persuasive essay with a thesis statement. Each day this week we broke down the critical elements necessary to answer either one of two prompts pertainging to our novel, “Inside Out and Back Again”. The first prompt was related to the emotional, mental and physical struggles of being a refugee and how would you react if this horrendous life changing event were to occur. What would you take with you and why? The second prompt that connects students to our novel is, why is it important to be an upstander? We brainstormed and free wrote about both prompts and realized which one spoke more loudly to us so that we might craft a thorough essay. Our class has learned how to create a hook for our opening paragraph, support our thesis with text evidence and present a clear persuasive literary argument. We explored the silly realm of Limericks for our Poetry study of the week. Each one of us read aloud a limerick, had a laugh, and then created our own limericks to share with the class. Our class used this week to truly explore our creative side in how we would represent our Novel Project. We used clay to recreate crucial and powerful scenes from the text, assembled and commented on our Google Slide Presentations, produced a children’s book, and finally wrote a news article about the powerful event that sent our main character’s family into exile from native Vietnam, The Fall of Saigon.

“Inside Out and Back Again” Projects 

 

Chalkboard Questions of the Week

-Who are your 3 closest friends?

-What is your favorite Store?

-Who are Top 3 favorite athletes?

–What is your favorite current TV Show/Movie on any Streaming Platform?

-If you could interview any 3 people in History, Who would you select?

 

In Social Studies, our class engaged in various Data Talks this week. The first was a ethnically geographic representation of where Irish-Americans, Greek-Americans and Polish-Americans live with the greatest concentration across our nation.  We viewed a NY Times Picture taken by an amateur photographer showing people enjoying the empty Manhattan streets last year by having a quality bike ride with friends. Our class noticed how much can change over the course of a year. After learning the clever and joyful lines of limericks, we took a brief tour of Ireland and were surprised how green and rural was the country. Mrs. Vash returned to our class and lead us in a healthy session about self confidence, positive self-talk, how to learn from our mistakes and never give up.

Class Soundtrack:

The 3 Irish Tenors, Tina Turner, Gaelic Storm, Sharon Corr, U2, Enya, Joan Jett

Map Location Current Total: 59 (countries or cities)

Enjoying Outdoor Soccer (P.E) Thanks Coach Medinah!

 

In Science and Math, our class continued to strengthen our skills in the Math Challenge covering these topics: Order of Operations, Story Problem, Bar graphing our data results from last week’s WiFi experiment, multiplication 3 digit by 3 digit numbers, and division using 3 digit and 2 digit numbers.  Mindset Math presented another partnered, progressive pattern seeking assignment. Each team studied not only visually what changes occurred between sheet 1 and sheet 2, but what numerical formulas could be used to determine the future block grid representations for each scenario. We learned in science this week, how noise pollution and population density are connected. Our class also was amazed to read and study noise pollution at sea and how it affects marine life.

Mindset Math: “Two Pattern Tango”