I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with families, friends and food. As we return from the Thanksgiving holiday, our school week will be a simple one.
In math, we will continue our study of division. We will be working on division with a remainder and long division this week. I am planning on teaching long division in class before students encounter it on the computer. We will be doing long division problems on graph paper first in order to help keep place values straight and will eventually transition to doing the problems on ordinary paper. After column multiplication, long division is the most complicated process students learn in grade school math. Please ready to support you students at home as they learn this challenging process.
This week in RM, studnets should not go past the lesson "Division with a Remainder" until Wednesday, and if they finish the lesson "Long Division" by the wekend, they should not go past it. They should go into Wall of Mastery instead.
In geology, we are beginning the long-awaited geology project. It will be a model of the earth's interior as pictured below. Each night, the student's will add a few layers to their model until it is done.
The front of the project:
The back of the project:
This is the finished project, except for labels. The clay on the project I made is still a little wet, so I haven't been able to put the labels on it. However, students will not be assigned to put labels on the project until the weekend anyway. I will get you a picture of the labels by then.
The front of the project models the layers of the earth as if one could cut the earth in half through the center and see the layers. The back of the project shows the earth's crust (surface) and the tectonic plates that lie just beneath the earth's surface.The blue part with the green splotches is the crust. The blue represents the ocean and the green parts of the land. The land I drew is not intended to be any sort of accurate global map, and the students' land does not need to be either. The purple part represents the earth's tectonic plates. They lie underneath the earth's surface and are not exposed, soa more accurate model would have the entire back side of the project covered in blue and green crst. However, it is important for students to understand the plates, how they fit close toegtehr like a puzzle but do fit perfectly together. For this reason, I want their models to be only half-covered in crust on the back, leaving the other half with exposed plates.
Please don't let your students complete the project in a single night unless it is completely necessary (i.e., you will be out of town for most of the week). I have posted pictures of the finished project to help students and parents see what the final product should look like. However, they idea is for students to add layers to their project each night based on what they learned in class during the day. That way they are getting a tactile experience of the information, instead of just hearing lectures about something they can't see or feel. Also, we will be discussing relevant details of the project in class each day. I will be sending the students home with information on the steps to be completed each night as the project progresses, and I will also post the steps to my blog.
These are all the notes I have for you this week. As always, please contact me with any questions, comments, or concerns you have.
Sincerely,
Miss Wycklendt
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