It has been a wonderful week in the classroom and everyone is into a great flow in the classroom. Students are working diligently on their math, geometry and language arts activities.

In math, the sixth years are working with successive and non-successive squaring and the Hands-on-Equations material for algebra. Fifth year students are working with fractions and decimals. Several students are working with the decimal checkerboard and we are preparing to build one of our own for the classroom. Fourth year students continue their study of various polygons and are practicing with the checkerboard and golden bead frame for multiplication.

For science, we enjoyed learning about the Centripetal and Centrifugal forces and students offered their experiments showing Newton's laws of motion. Everyone also enjoyed our experiment with a penny inside of a balloon showing the Centripetal force at work. Gravity was discussed as well and all tied into our study of astronomy and our solar system.

This week in The Story of the World, we learned about the aborigines of Australia, their way of life and their stories about how the large island of New Zealand formed.

After our visit from Mr. Pronoun and his friends last week, we had a visit from Judge Grammar and Sargent Parsing. They helped us review all that we have learned in Grammar Land so far this year and gave all the kids of School-room-shire a challenge to find all the nouns, articles and pronouns in a specific text. They also worked in groups to brainstorm various ways to use these parts of speech in written text. 

Sargent Parsing and friends.

Fourth year students began working on a new language practice called the Complete writer, by Susan Wise Bauer, the same author that offered us The Story of the World. In literature groups, 4th years continue reading Frindle, while 5th years read Hatchet and 6th year students are discussing Catherine, Called Birdy.

Monday, Nov. 24th, we will go to the AMC Theater at Westshore Plaza to see "Big Hero Six". We are asking each student to bring in $20.00 to cover the cost of the movie and one drink and one snack item. Please have your child bring their lunch as normal since we will be eating at school before leaving for the movie.

Tuesday, Nov. 25th, we will go to Al Lopez Park for a fun field day and free play. Please bring a bag lunch to eat at the park. We need one more driver for this activity, please.

We wish everyone a safe, warm and joyous holiday next week. See you in December! 

Lauren concentrating on her work.

This week we went to the YMCA where we did cardio, racquet ball, and worked out in the fitness room. In Spanish, we studied facts about turkeys, the Dominican Republic, and Thanksgiving vocabulary. We are almost done with our class in Florida Virtual School for the semester and should be done in one or two weeks. Also, we had Earth Science where we learned about fresh water and wetlands. 

Then, on Thursday, we had Reading Writing Workshop where we learned about setting and theme. Finally, on Friday we had a service meeting where we worked on our presentation for our service projects. We also had a Wordly Wise mid term test and a tennis lesson later that day. That's this week's news. I hope you enjoyed finding out what we did  this week. 

                                                                      Andrew