October 26, 2012

In room 32 this week, in science we started are unit on energy.  Did you know there are two main types
of energy?  one is called kinetic energy. the other one is called potential energy.  Were studying
electricity.   Did you know that atoms and electrons are needed to make the atoms equal.  We
 also looked at circuits when the circuit is open the electricity wont flow. When the circuit is closed
 the electricity will flow. We watched a video called this too shall pass.  You should watch it too.

                              In social studies we are learning about explorers. Amerigo Vespucci , and how he was the first one to relies he was in a different country . And Ferdinand Magellan , and how he was the first one to travel around the world.
                                     
                              When you are writing a personal essay you get to express your a opinion about a topic you feel strong about. First, you would have to think about a thesis statement. A thesis statement is when you think of a statement like Baseball is the Best Sport. Then, you would think of supporting evidence like a mini story or a survey. When your done with your supporting evidence you will be able to lay out what order you want your paragraphs to be in. There are three paragraphs. After that you would make a rough draft and afterwards you will revise and edit. When you revise you might want to change about five to ten words into a synonym. When you are done with that you would do COPS. Capital, Organization, Punctuation, and Spelling. When you are done you can make your final or type it. That's how you write an essay.

October 5

Yesterday in Social Studies we watched the Presidential Debate. The two candidates are Barack Obama & Mitt Romney. On the debate on October 3, 2012 they talked about Domestic issues. We had to rate how well they did 1-5 on a piece of paper. They used vocabulary words like Federal and Deficit.

Also, in social studies we were learning about the Vikings and we had to make a Viking time travel report pretending we were with the Vikings. All of you were wrong.Vikings aren't all big blood thirsty people with blue eyes. In fact none of them had horns on there helmets,none.

I want to talk about math ,my favorite subject.In math we were doing area models.Area models are mostly used for multiplying large numbers.I love area models because you have to multiply most of the time , and i love multiplying.Area models are good for you not only because your multiplying but, because its for your education.

September 28, 2012

       Did you know that Vikings didn't actually have horns on their helmets or that not every Viking's a blood thirsty tyrant? Vikings were mostly farmers and traders that lived in Scandinavia, which was built up with Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. They lived in barn like houses called 'halls' or 'longhouses' with their families and during the the winter they brought in their farm animals. Vikings did raid and kill though. They sailed to the to the coast of England and killed monks, took their treasures, and took some monks for slaves. This is what we learned about Vikings this week.

      This week we learned about the Newbery Award. Okay so you know that the Newbery award is for kids, right?  Well, kids have nothing to do with it.  It's really the librarians that pick the books.  We think that kids should actually have a say in it. It's not that grownups shouldn't be a part of it, but they see books differently than kids do.

This week in Social Studies we learned about Pangea, tectonic plates, and continental drift.  Pangea was the name of the continents on Earth when they were joined together.  A scientist named Alfred Wegner discovered this first, but no one believed him.  He had found a way to fit all the continents around Africa.  It turns out his theory was right.  Tectonic plates are ike bases under the continents.  These plates move about 3cm every five years.  These plates broke apart and the continents drifted apart.  This caused Australia to move towards the bottom of the world and change its climate.  The continental drift also caused certain crops to grow in one place and not another.  This is what we learned in Social Studies.

September 21, 2012

           This week in Science we did an Engineering Design Challenge.  Each table was a group.  Each group has 5 materials.  We had a ruler,4 balls,a container, a cup and a piece of chart paper.  Each group had to come up with a experiment to try and do with all materials.  We learned that we all have to agree on what to do so it doesn't end up in a big argument.

            This week in reading we learned about Greek and Latin word roots.   Did you know that the words predict, dictator, and dictionary all come from the Latin language? Dict means "to say." Also, the words microphone, microchip, and microscopic all come from he Greek language.  Micro means "small."  It was really interesting and loads of fun.  

            In reading this week we did prefixes and suffixes.A prefix is something that is at a beginning of a word .Here are some examples: so one is re in recycle or ly in quickly.Now lets talk about suffixes , suffixes are something you put at the end of a word to change its meaning and you can change it from one type of word to a different type of word.

September 14, 2012

                                                                     Reading
                         In reading we read a book called " The Man Who Walked Between the Towers". It was about a man who walked between the Twin Towers. It was a true story and the man's name was Philipe Petite  He laid on the cable,ran,jumped,walked,danced,and sat on the cable! He was a VERY brave man!
                          In science we are learning about physical science. In Technology we did a paper about what technology is and read a passage about toy ducks at sea.Toy ducks at sea is about how scientists and explorers discovered the oceans around the world.In the paper we had to do we had to circle the things we thought were technology and circle what technology is.
                       In social studies we did plenty of things.We were learning about longitude and latitude.How we learned about it was by checking each state and what there directions were.We also learned about the US Constitution and maps.

Greetings!

Today was an amazing first day of school.  The kids were incredibly respectful, well behaved, and came in eager to learn.  Initial anxiousness quickly gave way to smiles as we worked on setting the foundation for a great year to come.  Beginning next week, this blog will be written by the students, and I'll pop in once in a while.  Let me just close by saying that the students in our class are fantastic and I am looking forward to helping them grow and learn this year!

Mr. Weinstein

August 11, 2012

Greetings!

I hope you are all enjoying the last few weeks of summer vacation.  I am incredibly excited to head back to school and begin a new year.  Over the summer, I have been doing lots of reading, playing guitar, playing video games, and relaxing.  I have also spent a lot of time at the Potter Road Community Garden growing vegetables for the Framingham Food Pantry.  Ms. Langmeyer and I learned a lot this year about how to properly space and plant vegetable plants so they don't invade each other's space. :)  I'll tell you all about it (and show you) when we get back to school!  See you all soon!

Mr. Weinstein