Tuesday, October 28th: Part of the Whole Square, Science Enrichment Reading (SER): "Zombie Plants"

We reviewed student-designed games for the first half of class, taking a look at why some pieces worked well together while some did not fit quite right. Students then played the games before taking some time to meet their new workbook, Bits & Pieces II. This book, put out by Connected Mathematics, will guide our study of Operations With Fractions, and you can expect to see it come home for some homework assignments. Tonight, however, the students will be bringing home a handout that asks them to label each part of a square based on what fraction of the whole it represents.

In science, students watched a 5-minute clip from Planet Earth: Jungles while filling in a chart categorizing what they saw as Producers, Consumers, or Decomposers. This was their first chance to show what they know so far in a formative assessent. After, we headed outside to search for more examples of these three categories in the woods outside the school. Students found mushrooms, moss, milkweed, trees, vines, heard birds, dug for worms, and discussed what category these really belonged in. At the end of class, I explained a new routine around homework: Science Enrichment Readings. These are 2-4 page articles written at a 7-9th grade reading level that delve a little deeper into topics we are studying. Students will be taught how to take notes on the reading in order to discuss or work with the text later, and they are invited to come to a Science Group Lunch in my room on Fridays. Tonight's reading is about bacteria that infect certain flowering plants, creating 'zombie plants' that change to rely on certain insects to reproduce. These are not mandatory homework assignments, but have been suggested for students who are interested in the topic or are ready to read and respond to more challenging material.