Week 13 : Math and Science Test Study Guides

Dear Parents,

This coming week of school will be a calm one in terms of the schedule; we will be following our normal schedule except for Friday. Veteran’s Day is on Friday, and we do not have school that day.

Tuesday, November 15 will be our fourth grade field trip to the MIM (Musical Instrument Museum).  Last your, our filed trip to the MIM was a great success, and we are excited to be offering this opportunity again. Details about cost and timing, as well as permission slips, will be coming out later this week.

Friday, November 18 will be our annual literary and historic figure day. Students are encouraged to dress up as characters from class stories or form history. No scary or aggressive costumes are permitted, of course. Students are not required to dress up, but if they choose not to, they are required to come in uniform.

As announced last week, we will be having our first math and science tests of the quarter this week. Both tests will be on Thursday in order to have more time for students to study and more time for in-class review. The study guides are below my signature line on this post.

This week I will be sending home records of students’ RM homework completion, including the total number of points they earned for last week’s RM homework. Completing the required 20 minutes is worth two points, completing 10-15 minutes is worth one point, and completing less than ten minutes is worth zero points. Anytime students log into the RM system to work in guided study, they have to complete a warm-up which will take about five minutes. If they log in and work for less than ten minutes, they are not making any progress on the lesson, so I am not giving points for students that are not working for at least ten minutes. Students that work for longer than the required twenty minutes can also earn extra credit points.

This week, students should be in the lesson “Formulas for the Area and Perimeter of Squares and Rectangles” by Monday, and they should not go past “Dividing Round Natural Numbers.”

Next week we will be starting geology, so students should have the supplies for their geology project on hand by then end of this weekend.

These are all the notes I have for you this week. If you have any questions or comments, please send me a message through your Jupiter Ed account.

Sincerely,

Miss Wycklendt

Math Test Study Guide on Factors, Multiples, and Column Multiplication

1.       Students should be familiar to with factors and multiples. Factors are numbers that you multiply together to get a given number. Most number have several pairs of factors. For example, 3 and 4 are factors of 12 because 3 x 4 =12. 2 and 6 are factors of 12 because 2 x 6 = 12. 1 and 12 ae factors of 12 because 1 x 12 = 12. Multiples are numbers your get from multiplying by a given number. For example, 12, 24, 26 and 48 are all multiples of 12 because you can multiply by 12 to get them. Many students skip count to identify multiples.

2.       All numbers have one and themselves as factors. Some numbers only have one and themselves as factors; these are called prime numbers. For example, 11 is a prime number because the only numbers which multiply o make 11 are one and 11. Mathematicians do not consider one and 0 to be prime numbers, and I will not accept them as examples of prime numbers on the test.

3.       Most numbers have more factors than one and themselves; these are called composite numbers. For example, 8 is a composite number because 1 x 8 = 8 but also 2 x 4 = 8.

4.       Students should be able to identify whether a given number is prime or composite and explain how they know this. For example, 10 is composite because 2 x 5 = 10. 3 is prime because only 3 x 1 = 3. Students should also be able to come up with their own examples of prime or composite numbers and be able to prove that those examples are prime or composite in a similar fashion.

5.       Given a number less than 50, students should be able to identify all the factors of the number. I will typically be choosing numbers that are on the multiplication tables to make finding the factors a little easier. However, not all factors of those numbers will be found in multiplication problems that are on the multiplication tables, and students still need to find those factors. Students should be able to recognize that any even number will have 2 and some other number as one of its factor pairs, even if these factors aren’t on the multiplication tables. For example, 2 and 15 are factors of 30, as are 6 and 5, 3 and 10, and 1 and 30.

6.       Given two numbers, students should be able to explain if one number is a factor of the other number or not. For example, is 6 a factor of 26? No, because 6 x 4 = 24 and 6 x 5 = 30. Students could use a number of other reasonable thought processes to explain their answers, including skip counting and adding.

7.       Given a number, students should be able to list multiples of the number or identify a particular multiple of that number. For example, what are the first three multiples of 13? They are 13, 26, and 39. What is the ninth multiple of 3? The ninth multiple of 3 is 27. (Skip counting or multiplying could be used to explain this answer.) Students should be able to identify when a list is being asked for as opposed to a particular multiple. If they five me a list that includes they particular multiple I asked for, I will mark it correct, but if they only give the fifth multiple when I asked for the first five multiples, I will mark them incorrect.

8.       Students should be able to answer questions like the following: 42 is the sixth multiple of what number? It is the sixth multiple of seven because 6 x7 = 42.

9.       Students should be able to accurately perform column multiplication by a one-digit number with regrouping (carrying).

10.   Students should accurately be able to perform column multiplication by a two digit number with regrouping using the traditional method we all learned in grade school. In class, we have broken some two digit column multiplication problems apart into three separate problems in order to help students understand what they are doing when they perform column multiplication. However, this is a tool to help them understand two digit column multiplication. It is NOT a replacement for the traditional process. Students should NOT be breaking problems like 345 x 25 into three problems in order to solve them. I will mark them incorrect. They need to prove they can perform the traditional process. Students who have not completed the RM lesson “Column Multiplication by a Two-Digit Number” will be at a big disadvantage, and they would do well to try to catch up before the test.

11.   I know the above study guide on factors and multiples is long, but most of the students understand them quite well as long as they do not confuse factors and multiples for each other.  The more difficult part for most students will be the two-digit column multiplication.

Science Study Guide on Electricity and Magnetism

1.       Electricity is the motion of electrons hopping form atom to atom. Students should know this definition. Students should also understand that electricity is caused by electrons hopping from atoms in a negative state (atoms with more electrons than protons). The hopping electrons are looking for atoms in a positive state (atoms with more protons than electrons) so they can bond with the protons.

2.       Students should know the definitions of current and voltage. Current is the stream of electrons flowing along a directed path to a destination. (It is a stream like in a river; the electrons are moving in a line instead of bouncing around all over the place. They have a destination they are trying to reach; usually they are trying to get to protons. ) Voltage is how many electrons are moving. A high voltage means more electrons are moving and a low voltage means fewer electrons are moving.

3.       Students should know that a conductor is a material that allows electricity to pass through easily and an insulator is a material that does not allow electricity to pass through easily. They should know basic examples of each. Metal, water, plants, animals and people are all conductors. Stone, wood, rubber and most everyday items are insulators.

4.       Students should know the parts of a simple circuit and be able to draw a diagram of a simple circuit. (The expected diagram is in their notebooks.) A simple circuit must have a power source, a conductor, and an object to power. A switch is optional but not necessary. Students should be use these general terms to explain the parts of circuits instead of giving specific examples such as batteries and wires.

5.       Students should understand how a switch works. A switch connects a circuit. When a switch is open, the circuit is not connected. The electrons are not able to reach the protons they are trying to find, so they don’t move and the electricity does not flow. When the switch is closed, the circuit is connected. The electrons move to find the protons and electricity flows. Basically, a closed switch turns the circuit on and an open switch turns it off.

6.       Students should know the difference between a parallel circuit and a simple circuit. A parallel circuit has one power source, but it has two (or more) objects being powered and two (or more) conductive paths. This language is very deliberate: not two conductors, two conductive paths. A simple circuit has only one path for electrons to move on: around in a circle. A parallel circuit starts with electrons moving from the power source on a single path, but then that path branches off into two possible paths for the electrons to follow. Each path has an object to be powered. After passing through the powered objects, the paths come together and fuse again into one path on which all the electrons travel back to the power source.

7.       Students should be able to draw the diagrams for parallel and simple circuits. They should have those diagrams in their notebooks.

8.       Magnets are caused by a small number of electrons in an atom spinning in the opposite direction as the other electrons in the atom. All electrons orbit the nucleus of the atom. As they orbit, they also spin on their own axes. They generally all spin in the same direction, all clockwise or al counterclockwise. When a few electrons spin in the opposite direction as the other electrons in their atom, they create a magnet.

9.       Magnets are attracted to metal and other magnets.

10.   Magnets have two ends called poles. Every magnet has a north pole and a south pole. Opposite poles attract; same poles repel.

11.   A magnetic field is the space around a magnet in which a magnet can attract or repel other objects without touching them.

12.   Electromagnetism: When an electric current passes through a conductor, it creates a magnetic field. This means that there will be a magnetic field around ANY current of electricity. For an interesting example, you can connect a screwdriver to a battery with wires and the screwdriver will become a magnet.