Please notice below that we will be starting our One Book, One Pershing West selection this week: Ninth Ward. It's an amazing book. I hope you read along with us! Have a good week:
In Word Work, we will finish GUM Book Unit 3. Students will take a test this week on the concepts in this unit. In writing workshop, students will write the body of their essays based on personal experience. We will discuss revising and revisiting our thesis statements as we write our essays. In literature study, we will begin the novel Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Here’s a synopsis: Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. She doesn't have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she does have is Mama Ya-Ya, her fiercely loving caretaker, wise in the ways of the world and able to predict the future. So when Mama Ya-Ya's visions show a powerful hurricane — Katrina — fast approaching, it's up to Lanesha to call upon the hope and strength Mama Ya-Ya has given her to help them both survive the storm. We will be discussing relationships between characters as well as visualization strategies that will make the text come alive in our minds. I highly encourage you to read along. This is a novel the whole school will be reading and discussing. This week in math we will be reviewing Topic 13 and taking a test. Items that students should know for the test include: How to find the surface area of a net of a rectangular prism (find the area of each face and add them together), How to find area of a rectangle (a=length x width), How to find area of a triangle (a=1/2 x base x height), How to find the volume of a rectangular prism (volume=length x width x height), How to identify a triangular prism, pyramid, cone, rectangular prism, or cylinder, How to visually fold a net into a cube, How to find area of an irregular shape (break it into two regular shapes, then add the areas together), and How to find the volume of an irregular solid (break it into two regular solids, then add the volumes.)
In science this week, students will continue our discussion on the following focus question: There are more whales in Antarctica in December, January, and February. How might this affect the penguins in Antarctica? Students will analyze the data we collected and graphed last week. Then, students will explore more penguin adaptations, while drawing and labeling a penguin.
