Language Arts

What are we learning?

• Students will understand that contributing, listening, and responding are equally important roles in a conversation. 
• Students will understand that connecting with people over books can change the way you feel about reading.
• Students will understand that fiction writers draw from real experiences to increase believability and relatability. 
• Students will understand that in fiction, the relationship between conflict and resolution communicates the deeper meaning of the piece.

Home/School Connection

• What’s worth talking about?
• What is the relationship between groups (class/race/economic status/culture/religion) and power and opportunity? 
• How can I help readers see themselves in the past? 
• How do we reveal human struggles within a historical context?

Math

What are we learning?

• Students are learning to identify the unit rate represented by a verbal description.
• The students are learning to determine a missing value in a ratio table that represents a proportional relationship between two quantities using a unit rate.

Home/School Connection

• Ask your child to help you determine the unit rate of some items you are buying from the grocery store? 
• How much would it cost to get two or three of those items?

Social Studies

What are we learning?

• The students are learning to evaluate territorial expansion and how geographic and economic factors influenced the westward movement of settlers.
• The students are learning to analyze the cause and effect relationships of westward expansion and its impact on American Indians.

Home/School Connection

• Ask your child why people moved out west in the 1800s.
• Ask your child to explain how the westward expansion of America led to the relocation and removal of the American Indians.

AAP

Math:

• In our Triangles and Quadrilaterals unit, students will continue to build on the concept of ratios and rational numbers to solve problems involving proportional reasoning. During this unit students explore the concept of proportionality in relation to shapes. They learn that for figures to be similar they must have corresponding angles which are congruent and corresponding sides which are proportional. Students will utilize proportional reasoning strategies they have honed during other units to solve problems (including practical problems) involving similar quadrilaterals and triangles. In addition, students explore what they know about transformations, practicing reflections and translations of shapes on a coordinate grid.
• In our next unit we explore the probability of random events.

Language Arts:

• Students will evaluate character development against their own experiences to create new understandings about life lessons
• Students will analyze and incorporate all parts of functional texts to understand the author’s purpose and to locate and interpret information

Social Studies:

• Students will continue analyzing and describing the forming of our nation and the historical development of the Constitution of the United States. Our next unit will explore how change in America was forced during Westward Expansion. We will dive into the years between 1801 and 1861 and learn how the newly formed United States changed in many ways- size, shape, technological innovations, and more.

Science: 

• Students will continue investigating and and understanding that water has unique physical properties and has a role in the natural and human-made environments

Table Talk:

• How does my learning community change over time?
• How does my learning about the changes in the past help me understand the present?
• How do organisms, including humans, change the environment they live in?
• How do personal experiences, relationships, and beliefs inspire people to make changes in their community?
• What causes positive, neutral and negative changes in society?
• How does the idea of change connect with the concepts I am learning in class?

Click here to see what students are learning in Specials!