November By: Janie & Megan

In Social Studies, we finished the Mesopotamia unit by putting on a play about the daily life of a boy or girl in Mesopotamia, and we’re now learning about Ancient India. We already learned about the geography. We now have to make a map of Mohenjo-Daro, a city in Ancient India next to the Indus River. We’re trying to make it accurate and detailed with the information the textbook gives us. For example, we have to make the citadel, a massive fort, on the left side of the map, or the west side.

During Science we also started a new unit, Matter and Energy. Before that, we took a test about Ecology to finish up the unit. In Matter and Energy, we already figured out the difference between mass, weight, and volume. Another thing we did was figuring out what we wanted to learn in this unit, like doing a hot dog experiment.

In Tech Ed, we are learning about rulers and their value. We now know that a foot was the length of a king’s foot, and an inch was about the length across their finger. Then, they just decided to make it one length instead of changing it every time that they get a new ruler, hence ruler. We are about to start our technical drawings, or the drawings of plans, to make a tic-tac-toe board. Then, we will get to go into the workshop and make it!

In math, we are working on ALEKS, a computerized program where we can work at our own pace on the subjects that we want to learn instead of waiting for a unit to be over so we can work on a more challenging one. We are playing a game called 24 when we get 4 numbers and we have to make 24 by adding, subtracting, dividing, or multiplying. Sometimes we even get decimals or fractions. Now, we have a newer version of the game when it is set up like a venn diagram with 3 numbers on the outside. Then, we have to figure out a middle number that works in both sides. They also have to equal 24.

In reader’s workshop, we are just finishing up our response journals that we fill out after 25 minutes of silent reading. Currently, we are also working on our journals, when we write about our reputation. We don’t know what else we will be writing about, because we just got them yesterday.

In writer’s workshop, we are making a real book. It is going to be hardcover, and we are getting it in the end of the year. We can design pictures and our own font, then just make it our own. We are writing about 8 prompts, such as ‘What is your favorite school memory?’ and ‘If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?’ Some of us are doing our story that we are doing for Write Away!. It is a lot of fun.