WMS: Math and Science Update

Dear Families,

What a wonderful warm and sunny weekend we had! And what a great start to our week already! I just wanted to give you a few pointers about this week in math and science before we all get lost in the sunshine -- I know, pretty optimistic of me that it will last. But I'm hoping! :) 

This week in math and in science our themes converge on inference. It's pretty awesome when thinking themes converge! And thanks to Mrs. Sherwood and Mr. Lucy, I hope the that your child will see the connections that exist in their reading class as well! 

Math

• Last week in math we revisited creating coordinate graphs. We had a quiz on that last Thursday and kids brought their quizzes home with them on Friday. This week we are focused on learning target 3: I can analyze a coordinate graph. We analyze graphs to infer meaning from them. Our mantra throughout all the exercises this week is "can I analyze this graph?" But what is "analysis?" 
• In language arts and in science, students have been thinking of inference as "reading between the lines" or "getting something that's not written down in the text." Inferences aren't just random guesses, however: they are build on evidence that we find in the text. Or in our case, they are build upon evidence that we find in a graph or a table.

Science

• In science this week we are going to start examining the layers of the grand canyon and making some observations about the different types of rocks in those layers. The observations we make this week will be the grounding of an inferred timeline about the layers. 

Website Files

I've included some extra support for students on my website that I wanted to let families know about. If you visit http://www.mrmacnevin.com and look to the right side of the site, you will see a section under "Useful Links" to my file cabinet site. It can also be accessed directly at http://files.mrmacnevin.com. There is a section for each of the books we've used this year. If you look in the "Variables and Patterns" section, you'll see where I've placed copies of the additional practice pages we will be using this week as well as the answer packets that we will be using: that way students can access those at home, too. There are answer packets for additional practice, for the problems, and for the ACE questions. These are PDF files, so they should work for anyone with a PDF reader. But if you are having difficulty opening the files, please let me know so that I can see about saving them differently.

Sincerely,

Brian MacNevin