La Lectura

Our class has been working on a very special project. We would like to invite our wonderful families to save the date for December 13 at 2:30, to come see the product of all this hard work!

• Identify and explain the characteristics of historical fiction.
• Identify key ideas and details about ancient societies.
• Take notes, summarize, restate, and paraphrase the key ideas of the text.
• Integrate knowledge and ideas and make text-to-text connections.
• Analyze the craft and structure of a text: determine the author’s point of view and analyze the word choice.
• Express ideas applying vocabulary with precision and accuracy at an academic level.
• Discuss the development of the plot and characters throughout the story.
• Vocabulary and word studies: building academic vocabulary, roots of words.
• Accurately identify demonstrative pronouns and adjectives.
• Spelling : Words with ga, go, gu, gue, gui, gue, gui
• Identify the elements of a play.

Ciencias

As we continue to work on our on-going model ecosystem project, students inquire into where food energy comes from. They learned the conditions under which plants add biomass. We also revisited the concept of photosynthesis as the process that produces new energy-rich biomass called food. Students learned a convention, trophic levels, for describing the movement of food energy from organism to organism in a food web. They created food webs and learned about the efficiency of transfer across trophic levels (10% rule).

 

Mathematics

This week we finished our chapter on ratios and began working with rates. Our objectives were:

• solve unit rate problems including unit pricing and constant speed
• review ratios by playing Review Connect Four
• demonstrate understanding of ratios on the chapter test

History & Geography

This week we completed our unit on Ancient Greece and Rome. Our objectives were:

• Describe the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire between 1 CE and 200 CE.
• Recognize the Germanic tribes, the rise of Islam, and the role of Christians at the end of the
  empire.
• Understand how Greek and Roman contributions have had lasting effects in our culture.
• Review important events and people from the unit by playing Snowball Review
• Demonstrate critical thinking and understanding of the topic on the Unit Test

English Writing & Spelling

Our Greek and Latin words this week were:

• fort: strong
• frac, frag: to break
• gen: birth, origin
• geo, terr: earth

Students are also finishing up writing their first narrative piece of the year. They have worked very hard for many weeks on this piece. Their writing will be on the bulletin board next week so make sure to take a look!

Specialists

Art with Ms. Kelly

Figure Studies

Each year I like to do a Figure Study project with all the students. This is a good way for them to learn about and review the basic proportions when drawing a person. We start with cutting out basic geometrical shapes for the head, body, arms and legs, and the students make a simple standing person using a collage technique. Then they learn how to make a moving figure, such as a person running or jumping. 

We started the project by looking at human figures in Art History, from early Greek and Roman sculpture, to Medieval religious art, to Renaissance paintings and statues, to Modern art. The students could observe the differences in realistic figures and more abstract ones. 

We also had fun with different students modeling for the class, to see if the rest of the class could create that pose using the paper basic shapes.

After the students made a collage figure, they also used crayon rubbings to create duplicate figures, and they cut out a variety of figures to show movement and rhythm in their art. Some of these amazing figures are on the bulletin board by “los banos” at school.

Holiday Mural

The students were able to practice their figure drawing skills when they made the Ice Skaters for the Holiday Mural at school. They all did a great job showing different ice skating poses. Many of the ice skaters are already on the bulletin board, and I’ll add more as they are finished.