This morning we completed our review of the caste system in India and made comparisons between the caste system and other organizations or social strata.
Henry and I finished reading "American Jungle" by Harvey Oyer. We also read an article on a sword that was found recently in Jupiter Farms at the bottom on a pond. The sword turned out to be 200 years old and from the Second Seminole War not far from the battlefield that we read about in the book and will be on display at Riverbend Park. He also did a map skills exercise where he looked at a map key and answered questions about the map. He completed a review activity of the unit where he answered written and multiple choice questions about what he has read.
This afternoon we continued working on our expository essay and Bobby is definitely making progress. During this session, Bobby introduced two or three opposing thoughts or arguments in his essay. One of the biggest takeaways from this exercise has been the obvious need to organize your thoughts in an outline form prior to beginning the essay. Once we discussed a given point and examined differing points of view, the writing effort became easier.
Arianna used grid mapping skills to locate items on a pirate treasure map today. Arianna did not seem ready to learn about map scales, but we will attempt again later in the year. Tranlating inches into miles was challenging. We did some matching activities together, making decisions about what Native American Indians would trade with pilgrims.
This afternoon we continued to focus on the next segment of our expository essay. Bobby did a good job of completing the biographical portion of the essay and completed a concise description of what event took place sparking this controversy. We will now present at least two or more opposing viewpoints either in support or opposition to Colin Kaepernick's actions. We are making progress slowly but surely. On a separate note, Bobby must use his daily planner in ALL of his subject classes. I will be checking this notebook before the weekend.
Types of Communities / Are We There Yet? / The Knight at Dawn
Lesson Outline
Today we continued our discussion on types of communities. We first read, City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems. In this sweet story, we read about a city dog learning how to live in the country by spending time with his new country frog friend. We got a nice review of the four seasons as well as the characters move through the seasons together. Danny then completed a picture sort of items that belong in the city and items in the country. He did a great job, scoring 12/12. Next, we watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning activity on the subject. Annie and Moby told us that an urban setting has a lot of people, noise, tall buildings, and uses trains, subways, and buses to help transport people. They reported that a suburban community is close to a city and offers many of the same services, but the homes and businesses are more spread out. They added that some people live in the suburb, but travel to the city for work. Finally, they showed us rural communities, which are big open spaces. These areas often have farmers who raise livestock and grow crops. We saw that population means the number of people in an area. Urban areas have a high population, while rural have a low population. We worked through the easy quiz together. Next, we examined these further by working in his interactive notebook. In a flip style format, Danny wrote facts about urban (big city, a lot of people, and tall buildings) and rural (farms, spread out, and not as many people). We also tackled a Florida Studies Weekly packet entitled, Are We There Yet? We learned that distance is the word for how far one place is from another. We saw a map of Florida and read about the distances from the capital, Tallahassee to places such as Tampa, Orlando, Cape Canaveral, and Miami. We learned about places within our community such as libraries and parks and discussed how we have those near our school. Additionally, we practiced directional words like above, right, and left. For the conclusion of our session, we continued to work on our The Knight at Dawn project. He finished typing the description of a castle in which he added that it has a tall wall and a moat. We searched the internet and found a picture of a castle to insert in his project. We then used the children’s dictionary to look up the word moat. Danny began typing that a moat is water around a castle as our time expired for the day. We will continue on in our next session.
Craig and I followed-up on the distinction between the terms emigrant, immigrant and migrate and discussed why the pioneers emigrated to a new country. We discussed the changes that came about and led to the industrial revolution. We created a cotton gin like the one we saw on Pinterest. Craig did a great job with this project and he typed up a short explanation for the other students to read. When we were finished, we were surprised to find that Ms. Christine had real cotton bolls in her car from cotton that she grew at home! Imagine our surprise!!!! We watched a great video explaining the assembly line and Eli Whitney's contribution as pioneer of American manufacturing by inventing the cotton gin and, more importantly, interchangeable parts. We also were reminded of the effect of this invention on the production of cotton in the south and on the slave population.
Charlie and I continued to examine the 5 themes of geography, understanding them and looking to examples. We reviewed many different topics from Studies Weekly news and learned more about the middle ages and the renaissance.
