Week 5 Update

I've been having some technical issues with the blog and its connection to the website, but hopefully it will be sorted out shortly.

Learning Focus for Week 5:

5th Grade Math: We started to learn about decimals and place value through the thousandths place. We also studied rounding rules and practice rounding numbers to the nearest whole number. During the second half of the week, we introduced a project where students will design their own building out of found boxes while also researching the work of several architects. The project is the culmination of our Volume unit, and will continue into next week.

6th Grade Math: Our study this week focused on more practice with evaluating the mean and median from different sets of data and from different forms (bar graphs, pictographs, dot plots). We also learned how to work backward from mean, which is a skill where you balance the a set of numbers to make them equal, thus finding the a missing value. For example, if you are targeting a 90% score for the schoolyear, and you have a 88%, 94% and 86%, what percent would you need to achieve during the final quarter to average a 90% for the year.

6th Grade Science: We continued our study of Climate Change and the factors that affect the glaciers, sea ice and permafrost at the poles and higher elevation regions of our planet. This week we learned about how the thawing of the permafrost can have wide ranging effects on the environment, including leading to increased carbon in the atmosphere.