Math:
Monday, Da Sprouts solved a puzzle and a cut and paste matching exercise as final practice with solving inequalities. On Tuesday they completed the unit with a check in. Wednesday we moved into the geometry unit with a lesson teaching that every triangle’s angles add to 180 degrees. Finally Thursday, they started exploring area and how area of a rectangle can be used to find the area of triangles and parallelograms.
Evershrooms finally got back to their robots and finished them this week.
Polar Bears Started their surface area unit by learning the formula for finding the surface area of rectangular and triangular prisms. They continued on with application problems, then started making robots like the Evershrooms!
Mountain Lizards learned the quadratic formula Monday. Ask one to sing it to you! The rest of the week they practiced identifying which method they should use to solve a quadratic equation.
Watch the Video of their musical masterpiece here.
All students took part of Thursday to make their final trades with the Stock Market Game. It ends today (4/19).
ELA:
We kicked off the week with a Quick Write in our journals, connecting a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald about inner beauty to characters in our novel, The Second Mrs. Gioconda. Afterward, we discussed those connections and the clear consensus among these young people was inner beauty is more important than outer beauty. On Monday we also broke up into Book Clubs to discuss the novel, then came back together as whole classes and continued building a wall of new vocabulary words from our novel.
Tuesday we jumped into a classic style of poetry–the ode. We defined its characteristics with notes in our journals, then analyzed “Ode to Sausage” altogether for imagery and figurative language. After that they worked in small groups to highlight those same traits in “Ode to My Basketball.” With great examples under their belts, students completed a brainstorming exercise to flesh out topics for their own odes.
After careful consideration and full of inspiration, they selected a topic and conjured up sensory details about it. Finally, on Thursday they began composing!
Theme:
“Come fly with me, come fly, let’s fly away!” – Come Fly with Me, Frank Sinatra
Theme students had a whirlwind week as we took a tour of Renaissance Florence, Italy. We began the week by planning our tour. Students studied the physical and cultural characteristics of the city dubbed the “cradle of the Renaissance.” Their investigations allowed them to see why Florence was ground zero for the age. They used the information to create a city “Crest” for Florence, filling it with symbols and annotations reflecting its importance.
We then went to the airport, lined up with boarding passes, and took off for Italy in the 15th century. After a long flight and some stale peanuts, we started the tour. Students visited five sites and performed many tasks, including redesigning the Duomo cathedral, carving and sculpting masterpieces out of soap, and casting their ballots for their best political theory based on the works of Machiavelli. Students commented their tour was both exciting and therapeutic.
We ended the week with a session of working on our project paintings. With grid lines created, students set about to replicate their artworks by filling in the individual areas with those from their paintings. Next Thursday we will start putting paint to canvas. Students will have the chance to work on painting at home should they choose to.
One last fun activity had students problem solving moving a hula hoop through lines of students holding hands. Their results can be seen here.
At top, Delta students complete an SEL Challenge to pass a hula hoop through their group without using their hands. Students were also transported to the Renaissance city of Florence, Italy, to visit sites that demonstrated why the city is called the “cradle” of the Renaissance.
The tour of Renaissance Florence had students flying, carving and sculpting, and engineering a dome for a cathedral. Their “visits” allowed them to experience changes in the medieval city brought on by the rebirth of classical knowledge.
Top left: Da Sprouts and Evershrooms compose ode poetry. Top right: Students brainstorm topics for their ode poems. Bottom: Evershrooms work together to identify imagery and figurative language in odes.
Top Left: Da Sprout solving an inequalities puzzle.
Top Right & Bottom: Evershrooms building their robots.
At top, students work to complete Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. Above, students work with Ms. Naomi to sketch on their canvas to reproduce their Renaissance Art.
