September/October 2021
Welcome to the 2021-22 school year at South Bristol School. In each newsletter, you'll find information about important dates that are coming up, you'll find out what your child is learning in math and/or science, and find other information that will help answer questions. Always feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] or 644-8177.
5th Grade Math
This year, all 5th-8th grade teachers in AOS 93 are piloting a new math program called iReady Classroom (aka Ready Math). The biggest difference between this program and our last program is the focus on mathematical discussion and discourse between students. Students can expect some homework each night that we have math. There are even occasional short homework assignments for students to complete with their caregivers.
Group using 5th grade book:
Current Unit:
- Unit 1: Whole Number Operations and Applications
Skills:
- Understanding volume
- Finding volume using unit cubes
- Using volume formulas to find volume
- Multiplying multi-digit numbers
- Dividing multi-digit numbers
Group using 6th grade book:
Current Unit:
- Unit 1: Expressions and Equations
Skills:
- Finding areas of parallelograms
- Finding areas of triangles and other polygons
- Using nets to find surface area
- Writing and evaluating expressions with exponents
- Working with algebraic expressions
- Finding the greatest common factor and least common multiple
Both groups do math games once every two to three weeks. These games will mostly focus on fluency with multiplication, estimations skills, and using the coordinate plane during trimester 1.
Students have 45 minutes of self paced independent learning to do on the iReady Classroom website to do each week. This 45 minutes needs to be completed between Monday at 8AM one week to 8AM on Monday morning the next week. The students get to choose which topics to try to master each week, which helps them review concepts and allows them to try math topics we'll cover in the future.
I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion in math and to keep track of assessment scores. My goal for each student is to score a 3 or better on each mathematics standard. This score indicates mastery of the standard. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work (engaged learner, responsible learner, and respectful learner). You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.
Group using 5th grade book:
Current Unit:
- Unit 1: Whole Number Operations and Applications
Skills:
- Understanding volume
- Finding volume using unit cubes
- Using volume formulas to find volume
- Multiplying multi-digit numbers
- Dividing multi-digit numbers
Group using 6th grade book:
Current Unit:
- Unit 1: Expressions and Equations
Skills:
- Finding areas of parallelograms
- Finding areas of triangles and other polygons
- Using nets to find surface area
- Writing and evaluating expressions with exponents
- Working with algebraic expressions
- Finding the greatest common factor and least common multiple
Both groups do math games once every two to three weeks. These games will mostly focus on fluency with multiplication, estimations skills, and using the coordinate plane during trimester 1.
Students have 45 minutes of self paced independent learning to do on the iReady Classroom website to do each week. This 45 minutes needs to be completed between Monday at 8AM one week to 8AM on Monday morning the next week. The students get to choose which topics to try to master each week, which helps them review concepts and allows them to try math topics we'll cover in the future.
I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion in math and to keep track of assessment scores. My goal for each student is to score a 3 or better on each mathematics standard. This score indicates mastery of the standard. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work (engaged learner, responsible learner, and respectful learner). You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.
5/6 Science
Our 1st unit will be an immersion into matter. We'll be learning about the states of matter, experimenting with properties of matter- both physical and chemical, classifying molecules, compounds, and elements, learning how the periodic table of elements is organized, and modeling molecules.
I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.
I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.
7th Science and 8th Science
The 7th graders and 8th graders will have separate science classes this year. However, they will cover mostly the same material. This year's 8th graders did the 8th grade science curriculum last year, so they need to do the 7th grade content this year. The 7th graders will also engage in 7th grade content this year.
Our 1st unit will be about cells. This is the basics about how life is structured, how organisms function, and how information is processed at the cellular level. We will use online gizmos, we'll make cell models for plants and animals, we'll read about cells in a textbook, and we'll use microscopes in the classroom.
I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.
Our 1st unit will be about cells. This is the basics about how life is structured, how organisms function, and how information is processed at the cellular level. We will use online gizmos, we'll make cell models for plants and animals, we'll read about cells in a textbook, and we'll use microscopes in the classroom.
I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.