New Project Kick Off Week!

    What a fun kick off we had on Monday for our newest project.  Our "Driving Questions" for this project is, "How would knowledge of sun and moon positions help you to survive in a new environment?"  The students did a wonderful job of coming up with our "Needs to Know" after our entry event.  We were so excited to see them come up with the skills that we were hoping they would realize they need.  This should be a fun project for all of us. 

     With our needs to know the students realized that we needed to read the book the City of Ember to find out more about this situation and where the people are coming from.  We have spent the past four days working in groups reading and learning more about the people of Ember as well as working on finding similes and metaphors in the book.
     We also, realized that we needed to learn some things about the sun, moon and shadows to complete our projects.  So, in science this week we started to work on these topics and will continue to explore these for the next few weeks.
     In math, we have been working on long division this week.  Some students are really struggling with this skill and it is not because they don't know the steps to long division.  Some students are struggling because they do not know their multiplication facts.  We have many programs that the students have been signed up for online to help them with this but old fashioned flash cards work great as well.  Ask your child some facts at the dinner table or at breakfast.  Quiz them on the way to school or to practice.  We are going to be skip counting around the school as well to help with this.  Anything you at home can do to help with this would be GREAT.
     We have three weeks left in the grading period so students need to remember that their Riverside Reads needs to be completed by the end of each grading period.  Also, students need to remember each week they need to do two Achieve 3000 articles.
     We will be sending home midterms on Monday.  Please look for these in the red folders.

Photos from our Entry Event!