“All The World’s a Stage” (Christmas Show Rehearsal)

In Reading and Language Arts,  our class continues to build quite an impressive log of books that have read over the past 4 weeks.  This past week brought a very unique and unorthodox schedule to our room as we prepared for The Annual School Christmas Show, as well as, our fascinating dissection unit for the remaining days of 2021. We are strengthening our reading comprehension, vocabulary, story development, and engaging with the text through our journal entries. Our class is becoming filled with more enthusiastic and curious readers.

Chalkboard Questions of the Week (Most Common Student Responses)

–When You Think of Music, What Words Come to Mind? (Instruments)

– What 3 Things Are You Most Excited about Over Winter Break? (Christmas, Snow, Vacations)

– What Are Some of Your Favorite Academic Activities During Our Day? (SSR, Writing and Math)

-Our Class Difficulty Level: Too Hard, Just Right, Too Easy? (Just Right)

 

In Social Studies, brought so many social interactions as we learned more about ourselves and our classmates with Rehearsal for the Christmas Show and our Secret Santa gift exchange. This joyful and entertaining tradition occurred during our Thursday huddle and was so much fun. Thank you to all the parents who drove around and helped make these delightful presents a reality!! Our class pulled sticks from our “Cup of Fate” to see who would receive their gift. When the name was called, the Secret Santa student would stand up and deliver the gift. The anticipation, joy, and appreciation truly brought out The Christmas spirit in all of us.

Our Class is Filled with Talented Actors and Actresses!

 

World Map Total: 23 (countries, cities, and more)

-[This Week’s Adventures]: More to Come Next Week!

Class Soundtrack (Spotify Playlists): “Christmas Classics” Our class keeps coming back to this playlist. 

DynaMath/Science “Robot Helpers and Adding Decimals”

 

In Science and Math, we persisted through the challenging and exciting identification and location of Organs, Skeletal Bones, and Muscles as we ready for our next Monday and Tuesday’s Fetal Pig dissection.  Mindset Math: “What Does it Mean to Divide Fractions?” presented our class with a creative and mathematical dilemma of creating cards of various sizes, but also blending with estimating the fraction of the paper that was used make not only 1 card, but an entire sheet of cards. DynaMath: “Robot Helpers” presented our class with a chance to strengthen our reading fluency, scientific and robotic vocabulary while reviewing how to add with decimals. STEM: “Fetal Pig Dissection Prep”, we divided the various systems of the animal into groups, read and took notes on each assigned section, shared our knowledge with the class, colored and assembled a internal organs diagram for us to learn from for our Monday and Tuesday dissection session. Our class realized how little we truly understood about the inner workings of our complex bodies.

STEM: “Fetal Pig Dissection Prep”

(Hour of Code): Mission Accomplished!

In Reading and Language Arts,  our class continues to build quite an impressive log of books that have read over the past 4 weeks.  We read from and discussed an informative Wonderopolis entitled, “Who Was St. Nick?”  which gave us a richer understanding of Christmas. Grammar: Our class added another rule to our toolbox to enhance writing with knowing when to use Than or Then. We continued to craft some highly funny and informative “3 Famous People Dinner” by using Canva. Next week will bring this fascinating creative research project to a close and pictures will be available. 

Chalkboard Questions of the Week (Most Common Student Responses)

–What 3 Words Would Describe Your Family? (Weird, Active, Crazy)

– What is Your Favorite Holiday Treat? (Cookies)

– What Makes You Angry? (Siblings)

-What is One of Your Favorite Pastries? (Macaron)

–If You Could Be Any Animal, Which Animal Would You Be? (Wolf)

 

In Social Studies, our class read aloud and thoroughly discussed a Wonderopolis article entitled, “Why Are There So Many Languages?” This brought a linguistically driven exploration of 2 different languages on Duolingo. Each one of us had to first attempt and investigate a language that did not follow traditional English characters or sentence reading direction: (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic and Hebrew).  [Parent’s Note]:Make sure to ask your Student which languages they chose and how was the experience. Our class provided a Compare, Contrast and Reflective journal entry about our language learning experience. We explored The Silver State (Nevada) and it’s rather diverse ecosystems while using our growing vocabularies to describe what words came to mind while we viewed this visual feast. Our class was quite surprised that Nevada is much more than just Las Vegas. Our class linked our geological and climatology studies of Himalayan glaciers with a brief video of one of the highest countries in elevation on Earth, Nepal. We were surprised how isolated the dense capital city of Kathmandu was from the sparsely populated mountainous countryside and how the crowded streets were filled with people, bicycles, and a few cars. Secret Santa has arrived in our class. We wrote down a few of our interests and drew names from a hat. Our class gift exchange will be during our Morning Huddle. We are so excited by the mystery!

Mindset Math: “Pieces and Parts”

 

World Map Total: 23 (countries, cities, and more)

-[This Week’s Adventures]: Nevada and Nepal

Multiplicity Lab: “What’s Missing?”

Class Soundtrack (Spotify Playlists): “Classical Piano”, “Feel Good Christmas”, “Christmas Peaceful Piano”, “Heavy Beats”, “Summer Jazz”, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, “Energy Release”, “Productive Morning”, “Nepal Folk Music”

In Science and Math, we began a general exploration of Human Anatomy, in preparation for our future Fetal pig dissection STEM activity, by using three different Seterra challenges: Organs, Muscles, and Skeletal Bones.  The Daily Math Challenges that entered our classroom this week, to push our Math skills were: Multiplication via “TimesTables” online games to test how strong our facts knowledge was while having some fun. Mindset Math: “Pieces and Parts” created a unique partner challenge for our class this week as we explored how to manipulate collections of shapes that were listed in ascending order and divide them into 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. We noticed patterns, used our multiplication skills to calculate how much to shade for each shape set. Multiplicity Lab Photo, “What’s Missing?” our class visually dissected a geometric shape built with various shapes (triangles, parallelograms, rhombuses).  DynaMath: “Ordering Fractions Spinner Game” provided an opportunity for us to build our own fractional spinner and then arranged them from least to greatest. STEM: “Hour of Code” was a multi-day Computer Science global project. Each one of us began the initial world of coding by creating a dancing character, with music, interactive backgrounds, and so much more. (Dance Party) was a big hit in our class. Our class then used our initial skills to complete an entire hour of coding to earn our Certificates. We realized and appreciated how logical if/then logical formulas were necessary to build effective blocks of code to successfully make our program project do what we intended.

STEM: “Hour of Code” Computer Programming 

In Reading and Language Arts,  we continued to discuss the challenges and rewards of keeping our Home Reading Log and began to understand more about ourselves as readers and students. We read from and discussed about an informative Wonderopolis entitled, “Why Does Hanukkah Change Dates Every Year?” and discovered how different faith traditions follow a Lunar calendar and a few facts about this ancient holiday of dedication and The Festival of Lights during the dark times of our year. Grammar brought some new rules and strategies to enhance our daily writings. We discussed when to use “Who vs Whom“, “Its and It’s“, and “Fragments vs Sentences“. Our class used one of Questions of The Day, to create a research project opportunity. We took our individual list of 3 Famous People in History that we would invite to dinner and researched 5 facts that explain why they were famous. Our class used these facts to begin either a play script in our writing journal or an online comic strip. We look forward to continuing this creative journey next week.

Math Jeopardy: Our Biweekly Brain Bowl

 

Chalkboard Questions of the Week (Most Common Student Responses)

–What is the Bravest Thing You Have Ever Done? (Usually involved heights)

– Which Cartoon Characters Do You Wish Were Real? (Looney Tunes were quite popular)

– If You Were Invisible for a Day, What Would You Do? 

-What 3 Famous People, (Throughout History), Would You Like to Invite to Dinner? (Einstein or Frida)

–What Makes a Good Friend? (Trust)

 

In Social Studies, we explored the Bayous of Mississippi as we explored Mississippi Day and we were stunned to see not only many alligators outside of Florida, but also the width and height of so many large trees that make up the ecosystem in a Bayou. Our class read and discussed another Wonderopolis article about the origins of the names of the months in The Gregorian calendar. We used this historical information to provide a creative opportunity for each one of us to journal about how we would divide up time, what would we call these new portions of a life and how did we arrive at the meaning of each new term. Our class joined the rest of Plato Academy and decorated ornaments to adorn our designated Christmas tree in downtown Des Plaines. We gathered as a class, after school on Friday to gleefully place our ornaments on the tree and celebrate Christmas, good cheer and be proud members of awesome school. Our class returned to quest around the world by viewing stunning panoramic videos of various countries and states. We finished off this week with exploring the beautiful and fascinating country of Lebanon. Many students in our class stated that it looked very similar to Greece. Our class also explored the central African nation of Chad. We realized that the USA and Chad had little in common, but we were taught an important lesson in gratitude. Our class recognized that we have so many things that citizens of Chad may not, but we also saw so many smiles and joyful faces. Our class joined Ms. Lizzie’s and Ms. Anna’s class to visit The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center for an interactive “Upstander” exhibit. We were curious and well behaved visitors; we represented ourselves, school, and families with pride and honor.

Illinois Holocaust Museum: “Upstander Exhibit”

 

Mindset Math: “Fractions in a Pan”

World Map Total: 23 (countries, cities, and more)

-[This Week’s Adventures]: Mississippi, Lebanon, and Chad

Multiplicity Lab: “Arrays in Our World-How Many Do You See?”

Class Soundtrack (Spotify Playlists): “Jazz for Reading”, “Classical Reading”, “Christmas Classics”,

“Christmas Pop”, “Jethro Tull”, “Classical New Releases”, “Low Key”, “Country Christmas”, “Hanukkah”, “Christmas Jazz”

Decorating Ornaments

In Science and Math, we have advanced, as a class, to the next level of grit and mathematical skill acquisitions from another stellar week of Khan Academy. This time we now have individual weekly targets of 85 minutes. I don’t know what is more impressive the growing Math skills or the amazing mentorship spirit and support that our class displays when reaching out to a struggling classmate. The Daily Math Challenges that entered our classroom this week, to push our Math skills were:  Math Jeopardy made it’s biweekly return to test our individual and collaborative skills. Geometry: Triangle Sum Theorem where we blended our knowledge of measuring triangle angles and fusing it with our Algebra skills to solve for a variable. Mindset Math: “Understanding Fraction Multiplication Visually” presented an interesting task for us to create a type of graph and an image growth chart to represent the numerical value increase from one shape to another. The incredible result was that we never discussed which graph or growth to complete first and what method to choose. Multiplicity Lab Photo, “Arrays in the Real World” our class counted and classified a curious collection of cacti.  DynaMath: “Holiday Spending” taught us some valuable lessons not only of interpreting graphs, but how much money is spent and created over the holiday season. STEM: “Change of Ears” brought so many different scientific disciplines to our weekly experiment. We did group reading and note taking on the various animals (Biology), that have unique hearing adaptations. Our class then used Engineering skills to construct and test 4 different types of hearing devices. We were fascinated that our predictions occasionally were completely the opposite of our tested results.

STEM: “Change of Ears” Experiment