Boston Information Coming Home...

...as well as some classroom updates. 

First off, I will apologize for the lack of posts in the past month. Throughout this month we have seen a bunch of strong work here in our classroom.  We have worked on adding fractions with like denominators, designing and testing bridges that can span a 24 inch gap, reading intensely in books of our choice, and identifying different topics that we can write about to express our opinions and hope to convince our readers of something. 

We practiced adding fractions with a common denominator by changing our unit.  For instance often times the unit we use is one, therefore we count by one.  However if we change the unit to five, we can quickly see that what used to be "one," is now 1/5.  We used this idea to practice using different denominators, and different numerators, and add them together.  In the forthcoming week we will be working on what to do with the improper fractions that we get as a result of this addition.

Our bridge work led to lots of reflection and refinement in design.  We had bridges that held pounds of added weight, while others simply held their own weight, all of these met the learning intentions for this project, as the goal was to span a gap of 24 inches.

Also, please keep your eyes open this afternoon for some paperwork coming home about our Boston Trip.  Two forms will be coming home, one is a general permission form with emergency contact information and things like this, everyone should fill this out.  The other form is for prescription and/or over the counter medication.  If this one applies to your student please fill this form out as well (this latter form needs to be filled out even if you will be chaperoning with your child).  We also will be making some distinctive t-shirts to wear on our trip so we can easily spot each other.  For this we ask that everyone bring in a white t-shirt that is 100% cotton, and has been pre-washed.  We will collect these shirts throughout next week, and will be decorating them on the week of May 7th.  Also if any of you who are chaperoning need access to a plug in the night for a CPAP machine, please let me know so we can plan accordingly.

I hope you have a great weekend,

-Dave