During today's session we completed most of the unit review on animal behavior, roles of animals, and food chains. We watched a short film on how and why whales sing as an example of animal behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xr9BYhlceA. In this video, the migration of whales from their breeding to foraging grounds was mentioned, which spurred a discussion of the term migration. Arianna was familiar with the concept, but did not fully understand this topic. After completing the video and discussion, Arianna began to complete the unit review quiz by answering multiple choice questions.
“The Adventures of Charles Pierce; The Last Egret” by Harvey Oyer III – Using her VENN diagram she continued to work on her paragraph writing about the characters giving examples to support each trait she selected for them.
Today's lesson focused on how to add fractions with unlike denominators. Arianna changed either one or both fractions of addition problems to equivalent fractions with common denominators before adding. When needed, she wrote the multiples of each denominator until she found a multiple in common. Together we solved practice problems and will continue until Arianna is more proficient with this skill. She finished on Mathseeds with 1-minute addition fact drills.
Today's lesson was on the positive impacts that humans can have on the environment. Arianna was asked to complete a learning activity that checked her understanding of unit vocabulary, terms, and concepts. She also had to complete a question sheet that required critical thinking. We discussed the topic of conservation and Arianna shared her ideas of how to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
This morning we continued to work through the textbook and discussed the impacts (good and bad) that humans have on their environment and the role of animals on their ecosystems. Specifically, we discussed the impact that grazing animals have on grassland habitats. We ended the session with a short discussion of invasive species, with the zebra mussel introduction into the Great Lakes as an example.
Arianna and I listened to a YouTube presentation of Patricia Polacco reading her book "My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother." We got to hear the back story about her relationship with her older brother and how it came to change due to one key event in their lives. We reviewed what has happened up to now in Harry Potter and continued reading the next chapter.
Arianna completed the “The Adventures of Charles Pierce; The Last Egret” by Harvey Oyer III and we discussed the actions of the characters. She made a VENN diagram comparing the two characters as well as listing character traits. She will use this to write about these characters giving examples to support each trait.
Arianna and I worked on adding fractions with like denominators. We reviewed keeping the denominator the same when two fractions have the same denominator and only adding the numerators. Arianna completed numerous problems in which she added fractions and then used division to write the answers in simplest form. A daily spiral review was also completed on comparing fractions, ordering 5-digit numbers, finding the missing number to make number sentences true, and comparing length.
I sent Arianna a link to download Adobe creative cloud. I walked Arianna through downloading the software and installing it to her computer. Once completed, I showed Arianna an example of the animation that she would be working on in the next quarter.
