Field Trip Scheduled for After Spring Break

As part of March is Reading Month, 7th grade students came to our classroom to read.  They had prepared questions and discussion topics.

Hello, I hope you enjoyed the spring weather this past weekend, looks like we are in for a rainy week.

AAPS Climate Survey
Ann Arbor Public Schools would like all the parents at Ann Arbor STEAM and across the district to fill out a survey regarding our school's climate. More information and the survey itself can be found here.

STEAM EXPO
STEAM Expo night is scheduled for this Thursday, March 31st from 5:30 - 7:00 PM. A photo with more information can be found at the bottom of this post. A video with more information was in last week's post.

Used Book Sale
The first annual used book sale will be held during the STEAM EXPO.  All items sell for one quarter!

Field Trip
Kindergarten is planning a field trip to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens as culmination of our current unit on living things.  We are scheduling the trip for April 14th from 9 AM to 1 PM.  We will take a bus to the gardens and have a special class taught by the students who work there.  I definitely need parent chaperones, so if you are interested in chaperoning please email me.  Field trip permission slips went home last Thursday.  Most of you sent the permission slips back already.  I know the long weekend was not the best time to send them home, if yours is misplaced, it is no problem, I will send home an additional copies as needed.

Curriculum Overview
Science - In our current Project Based Learning unit we are studying the needs of plants and animals and how plants and animals adapt to, and change their environment to meet those needs.  This week we are preparing for EXPO, reviewing what we have learned, and discussing how humans are animals too.

Math - Students are graphing the data from our PBL plant experiment.  We will also construct 3D shapes using clay and toothpicks.

Literacy - We continue to look at the features of nonfiction texts as we study the needs of living things for our Project Based Learning unit.  Students are learning how to use an index, table of contents, and how to understand captions and sidebars.

Writing - Students are recording their observations of our plant experiment in a journal that tracks changes in the plants over time.

Word Study - We are focused on the words that we need for our current PBL unit: observation, survive, plant, inch, stem, leaf, roots, control group, variable.  And for our study of animals: wild, domestic, mammal, amphibian, insect, carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore.