May 4th

We will not have resources this week. Remember that Wednesday is early release and Friday afternoon from 1:00 - 2:15 is Field Day. Please bring water with your name on it!!!

This week is BSE Multicultural Arts Week! Our students will have many unique opportunities to experience and learn about other cultures. On Tuesday and Wednesday, artists and musicians from the Jacksonville area will visit our school to share their talents. Some programs we will see... bagpipe players, a Spanish guitarist and Spanish dancers, and Riverside Artists. On Friday, we will see the BSE Chorus perform their spring program, World of Music!

In our classrooms, we will learn about about two countries, Panama and Germany.

PANAMA: 

Students will learn about where Panama is located, which countries border Panama, why Panama is important, the construction of the Panama Canal, some of the Spanish language, and will also sample some food from Panama.

We will also create molas... brightly colored applique panels made only in the San Blas region of Panama by the Kuna Indians.

GERMANY:

 Students will learn about the geography of Germany, the culture of Germany, how Germany has influenced the United States, and how to say the German alphabet and some common German words.

After learning about the many castles of Germany, we will recreate our own versions of Swiss-German painter Paul Klee's, Castle and Sun. 

READING: We will continue to read our novel, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. This week, we will read chapter 22. We will revisit the Socratic Seminar. The Socratic Seminar is when students discuss questions that are very broad and open ended. Students dig into the novel for evidence that supports their opinions and thoughts. 4 questions will be given to students and they will write down talking points to prepare for the discussion. 

WRITING: We have started a short unit: informational writing. We will be using biographies as the main source of information. Instead of writing long reports about the entire life of a famous person, we are focusing only on the childhood. Students brainstormed a great list of questions to look at the childhood of a well-known person in depth. It included :

• Where did this person come from? family, date and place of birth, poor or wealthy
• What obstacles did this person overcome during childhood?
• Were there any people or experiences this person had contact with that caused them to follow a certain path?
• Did this person achieve something related to his/her later success in life?

We read about Susan B. Anthony and Milton Hershey and looked for information that addressed these questions. Hopefully, this week, we will choose our biographies and get started!

MATH:

Math Focus Points:

• Solving subtraction problems that involve comparison, removal or finding a missing part
• Subtracting 3-digit numbers by using strategies that involve either subtracting one number in parts, adding up, or subtracting back
•  Representing solutions to subtraction problems with number lines, 1,000 charts, and/or story contexts

Math Homework:

Unit 8, p. 51-52

Unit 8, p. 53

Unit 8, p. 59

Unit 8, p. 66

SCIENCE:

This week in Science we will begin discussing how living things are classified.