WMS: Tuesday Math/Science Update

Dear Families,

I just wanted to let you know that whatever my son had yesterday, I got last night. While I wasn't there today, my students practiced calculating the area of circles. Students who had the basics down worked on finding the area of composite shapes that are made up of parallelogram, triangle, and circular regions. These shapes were not easy to dissect, but they are great practice. The answers are on the back of these. 

Tonight's homework is listed in the calendar tab of my blog (http://www.mrmacnevin.com). These ACE questions are in the book and I wanted students to have a way to get the answers at home. So I went to the details portion of the ACE questions in my calendar and I typed in the answers there. To see these, just head over to that calendar, find tonight's ACE questions, and click on the assignment title. It should expand to show the answers. If it doesn't work for you, please let me know. If it does work, I think it's a great place to keep the answers! 

On tonight's homework, student answers should use complete sentences and should also include a description of their their thinking or reasoning. I asked my substitute today to share that with the students, but I don't know if she had a chance to. I will find out tomorrow, when I return.

In science today students started talking about what they think genetics are... or what it means. Our next topic goes into simple Mendelian genetics. Genetics. Simple. In 6th grade. I know, huh? This topics falls into the category of "interesting to know" but not critical for 6th grade [this was a typo on my original email... I forgot the word not]. But it also gives them a perspective of what drives the adaptations that we learned about over the last two weeks. So I look forward to seeing what our students already know about it and to seeing what they think of the activities that introduce inheritance of diploid genes. It's another topic that uses models and simulations to try and help students understand a complex idea. So while students won't be doing any actual breeding of organisms, there will be virtual experiments and paper simulations. Later, in 8th grade, students will review these ideas as part of their unit on "Organisms: from macro to micro" and they may get a chance to apply these ideas to breeding Wisconsin Fast Plants (they live their entire generation from sprouting to making seeds in only about 30 days).   

Have a great afternoon!

Brian MacNevin