Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 3, 2014
Our Field Trip is upon us! This Friday is the big day. We will engage in lessons taught by the education staff at the museum in the morning, and explore the many offerings of the museum in the afternoon. It’s going to be an amazing day! Please remember:
- Students must be dropped off no later than 8:15. Bus riders will need to be driven by car that day. Students WILL follow their normal dismissal routine home from school.
- ALL students need to BRING A LUNCH FROM HOME (even those who regularly buy lunch at school). Lunches must be in containers that are TOTALLY DISPOSABLE (we will not be bringing them back with us). Students should also bring a snack for the afternoon at school if they normally eat one.
Thank you for your efforts: they will make the day a big success!
Today is Read Across America day! In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, schools around the country celebrated by inviting readers from the community to read to children. The idea is to further instill a lifelong love of reading in children by showing them the power of literacy in the lives of adults around us. We were fortunate to host Firefighter David Hodgemey from the Shrewsbury Fire Department, who engaged and informed us while providing a role model for how important reading is in each of our lives. We appreciate his time and efforts! More info on this new American tradition can be found at: http://www.nea.org/grants/886.htm
New this week, we will learn the importance of writing good main events in our narrative stories. After learning to start our stories with a bang (Entertaining Beginnings), we will explore what makes a good main event (what the story is all about). We will see how action and observations play the largest role in most stories, and how most narratives written by children are improved with a minimum of thoughts, feelings, and dialogue. In addition, the best student stories are those that stretch out one moment in time (e.g. a time they snowboarded to the bottom of Ward Hill instead of a whole day they spent doing things on vacation). Videos on how and what of writing main events can be found at this site, the mainpage for the writing program we use at Floral: https://empoweringwriters.com/teachers-corner/video-classroom/video-main-event-modeled-writing-lesson-magical-bike/ You can practice at home by watching any short video clip of any event (Youtube has a great and varied selection) from the internet or your home movies. Examples: The time I rode “Superman, Man of Steel” at Six Flags; The time I had my ballet recital; The time I learned to ride a bike.
Our physical science work continues with our study of motion. Wednesday we will be designing systems using pvc foam pipe covers that facilitate the motion of marbles being rolled along the track, like a roller coaster. (For an example, see any of the short videos on Youtube, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLyC6tDQrkM .) Questions you can ask your child afterward, or while watching the previous video or similar ones at home: Why does the ball start down the track without pushing it (objects at rest need a force to make them move; gravity is the force here)? Why would someone start their coaster up high (the steepness of the slope affects speed)? Why should the track be free of obstacles, such as too much tape (friction slows things down and/or can cause a change in direction)? Why does the ball go up a loop or ramp when gravity supposedly pulls things down (speed and momentum can counteract the effects of gravity)?
