November Learning Adventures

Hello there, Philomath community! Another update from our virtual school/independent study programs with a few things to know going forward:

• Starting Monday, November 7th, all ELA students will be reading Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. The book is a fun, very accessible read, and your child will likely want to tear through it. However, for our learning activities in class, there will be some fairly specific requirements for how to approach this book:
  Students will need to read about one chapter per day to keep up with our in-class discussions. That will almost always happen outside of class, and after completing two chapters, students will need to complete a reader’s journal entry on Google Classroom. Please check in periodically on your child to see if they’re not falling behind or getting ahead…and reading ahead is strongly discouraged! Among other things, reading ahead in the book will make it much, much more difficult and time-consuming for your child to complete the reader’s journal assignment, which is a fairly sizable part of their grade this quarter. Check out the calendar on our reader’s journal assignment on Google Classroom to make sure you and your child know where they should be in the book at any given time.

• Again, there will be no class or independent study on Tuesday, November 8th in observation of election day. Thanksgiving Break will be from November 23rd through 27th.

• Keep an eye out for the November story contest; we’ll have a prompt going up for that sometime next week.

• The ancient civilization website project is due by class time on Friday, November 11th. See the assignment description on Google Classroom for specific instructions and a rubric. Your child is working hard on this project, so you should definitely check out what they’re focusing their energy on!

• This week both 4th and 6th graders will be wrapping up math units so we can start the new units next week: Fractions (4th) and The Number System (6th). In 4th Grade, students will be working on adding, subtracting, comparing, and multiplying fractions. 6th graders will be working with decimals, fractions, and graphing integers on the coordinate plane.

Our Next Science Units Are Coming on Monday, November 14th!

• The 6th Grade unit is called “Sharing Planet Earth” and will be focused on the interactions between organisms within an ecosystem, the link between resource availability and population size, interactions between ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural and manmade changes that affect specific ecosystems. This unit will be full of research opportunities and the students will be expected to find information in both text and digital resources as well as “out in the field”. Text resources may include, but are not limited to: encyclopedias, periodicals, science journals, field guides, and other informational texts on our chosen topics. Students will be expected to spend a few minutes outdoors collecting data (observations, pictures, etc) a few times a week to help them develop their hands on research skills.

• The 4th Grade Unit is called “Bake It!” and there WILL be baking involved. It’s all about the physical sciences this time as the students explore chemical changes through baking bread.  This is a very hands-on unit and the students will need to have a few ingredients ready to go starting on Wednesday, November 16th.  You may already have many (or all) of these ingredients at home.

  Your child will need:

  Flour

  Water

  Sugar

  Yeast

  Salt

  Vegetable oil

  *There may be additional ingredients needed as the students design and tweak their recipes over the course of the unit. (Some examples may include: butter, vanilla, garlic, eggs, assorted spices, or baking soda.) These will be specific for each student rather than a necessity for the whole class.

  We will be learning about energy, the principles of condensation and evaporation, matter and its three states, and changes that are reversible and irreversible.  During the class, the students will be mixing and observing changes in their dough.  I will be using an oven or stove during these baking activities, and you may assist your children in doing the same. Sometimes baking during class is not possible and you may prefer to have your child refrigerate the dough until a more convenient time when you will be able to bake their bread together.  That is absolutely fine, the students can bake after the classes as well, they just need to be sure to record their observations in their baking journal when they finish. I will be sending more information as the unit gets started, but please feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, or concerns.