WMS: Math/Science Update...

Dear Families,

Short weeks always go by so fast. And today we had a great send-off into a 3-day weekend for our students. The Bellingham High School Show Stoppers were here today as ambassadors of the music programs available in our high schools. They shared their talents of singing and then sent us off with a song/dance medley of swing music tunes. Awesome!

This Week in Math

• We took a quiz that students will have back on Monday for finding the area of circles and for finding the area and perimeter of composite shapes.
• We started examining volume. After initial explorations in drawing 3d representations of shapes, students defined for our class that volume is the number of cubes that something is made of. Specifically, we were using 1-cm cubes, but you can use any number of cubes you like. 
• Then we looked at describing the volume of "box" shapes by looking at just one layer of cubes in the box. Then we only needed to multiply that volume by how many layers there are (the height). We generalized that to partial layers (like 5.5 x 3 x 1) and described our process with the formula:
  V= l x w x h
• We then looked at what we'd have if we cut that "box" shape in-half. Each half would be 1/2 of the total volume, and that's how we find triangular prisms. But this one is still a work in progress! :) Next week we'll review what we learned this week and we'll talk more about those triangular prisms.

This Week in Science

• Students turned in their final drafts of their science expository essay to me on Thursday.
• As we've written these, we've had two learning targets in mind:
• 1: I can support claims with evidence.
• 2: I understand the force of friction.
• It was an adventure for me to ask students to write a 5-paragraph essay in science (mostly they are only asked to write observations and paragraph-long conclusions). But this was a great opportunity to extend their language arts expository writing skills into a different part of their day and I didn't want to pass it up

Looking Ahead

• Math: practicing and strengthening skills for finding the volume of triangular prisms.
• Science: Moving from talking about forces to discussing motion. We will be using force diagrams to help us describe systems of motion... more about that next week.

Thanks for all you do for your children.

Sincerely,

Brian MacNevin