Heading into Social Studies
Hello and happy September, Philomath community! Hope the school year is going well for you so far. Just a friendly reminder that there will be no class held on Monday, September 5th in observance of Labor Day.
Our English and Language Arts class has been practicing important reading and comprehension strategies including close reading, skimming and scanning, and drawing inferences. After the long weekend we’ll be starting a long-term nonfiction reading project—to that end, please secure a copy of any of the books in the “Who Was __?” series from your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon. Have your child choose a book about a person they’d like to know more about (I chose Marie Curie!). We’ll make a reading plan and begin discussing the book from Monday the 12th; if you can’t get a copy of one of those books before then, please let Ms. Althoff know as soon as possible. Also, look out for more information about our monthly writing contest coming out this next week!
In Math, 4th Grade just completed their first unit assessments to demonstrate mastery of place value understanding, addition, subtraction, rounding, and estimation. Next week we are onto Multiplication and Division!
In 6th Grade, the students have been focusing on factors, multiples, ratios, and rates. They are discovering the importance of determining the unit price of items sold in bulk (such an important life skill!) and have been identifying patterns in the relationships between numbers. The students will be moving on to ratio tables next week as they wrap up their first chapter.
The students completed their final research projects in the first Science unit of the semester: Extreme Adaptations. They presented on plants and animals that survive in extreme heat and cold or on several systems within the human body. The students spent their final day in class planning an experiment to determine how environment and genetics can affect how a plant grows. Does it matter how much sun a plant gets? Does every plant species require the same amount of sun? How much water is too much or too little? What if an animal eats the plant as soon as it starts to grow? These are just some of the questions that the students will be attempting to answer during their three-week “break” from Science.
With Science coming to a close for the time being, we’re going to move on to Social Studies! Our Social Studies class will happen at the same time and in the same Zoom room as Science, and will be taught by Professor Althoff. Our first unit will be focusing on the fundamentals of social studies and an introduction to ancient civilizations. Your child won’t need any special materials for this first unit, though there will be a few minor homework assignments over the next three weeks. Please make sure to check in with our four Google Classrooms to see if there are any assignments coming up or missing.
As always, please let either Professor Smith or Professor Althoff know if you have any questions about anything at all. Thanks for all you do, and enjoy your three-day weekend!
