March 7, 2015

Nate, Ashton, and Eva working together to graph data from a distance and time table.

Field Trip
We are in the midst of planning our field trip to Boston.  We are planning a one day excursion on May 29th, departing CBMS at 6:00 am, and returning 9:00pm.  We will be taking a coach bus, and will spend the day walking the Freedom Trail, lunching at Faneuil Hall, and then choosing either the Museum of Science or the Boston Aquarium.  Chaperones are welcome!  We will be handing out more information regarding this trip, and further fund raising opportunities as the date gets closer.  We welcome chaperones!  We will be letting you know if you will need to pay for any of the trip as a chaperone or not in upcoming newsletters!

Book Orders - Due this Thursday.

Distance Learning - We wrapped up our distance learning with our weather unit, and a couple of field trips to museums.  We completed one teleconference with a Historical Society in Maryland, and another to a science / zoology museum in Colorado.  We will be looking for other opportunities later in the spring!

Student Led Conferences- These will be taking place next Wednesday, March 18th.  You can sign up via the CBMS homepage.  If you would like to sign up for an individual conference after the student led conference, you can sign up on Wednesday night.  Remember, we are available for individual conferences throughout the school year.

Time Capsule Project- The due date for this project has been moved to Thursday, March 26th.  At 8:30 on the 26th, we will have a 'museum' to share these projects and invite family and friends to join us.  Students will each set up their projects on display to be viewed by guests.  Guidelines for this project can be found here.  Students have had opportunities to begin their research at school, but will be expected to finish their projects at home.

Mr. Taylor's Leave- During the month of April, I will be taking a paternity leave to be home with my son, Julian.  Siena Damon will again be filling in for me during this time.  In Math, students will be studying decimals and percents and will continue to have Math's Mates as weekly homework assignments.  Siena will also be teaching a Social Studies unit about life after the Revolutionary War. 

Math- Our current area of study in Math is focused around pre-algebra concepts.  Students have been creating and analyzing graphs and tables and will begin to write equations to represent situations.  We will continue to have Math's Mates homework assignments weekly and will start to review decimal skills to prepare for the upcoming unit.

Language Arts - We finished our Classics unit with comparing our books to movies about our books.  We are now in a writing unit.  Our writing unit is argument writing, which focuses on claims and evidence.  Some of this writing includes writing for the time capsule in which the students must claim that a particular artifact might be found in a time capsule from this time period, and then show evidence to support this claim.

iBlock for epal students - Half of the Quest Team are participating in an epal project with students in Berlin, Germany.  These students will be asking for and taking photos of some of the landmarks, and geography of Waterbury and the outlying areas.  We are focusing on what makes a community, such as transportation, geography, economics, and history.  They may be asking to take photos during your travels!  (We would love a photo of the Berlin Mall for example :) We will be printing these photos at school, and writing a paragraph for each photo taken.  Students in Berlin, Germany have finished their "tour guides" and are sending them to us.  Students can email photos to me, save them to their Google Drive in the cbmsepalsproject folder, or upload them to #cbmsepalsproject on Instagram.  Students can also bring in maps - tourist or otherwise to include.  We will be completing these for the month of March.

ESB - We are in our Revolutionary War unit.  Students are learning bibliographies this week, as well as Revolutionary War Culture.  Today, we checked out the website to Williamsburg, Virginia, and learned more about the occupations of colonists, and of people who lived near colonial Williamsburg.  We have been working on including evidence in our writing, and began a bibliography to be included in the time capsule, when it is due, on March 26th.

Questions to ask:

What are you planning to put into your time capsule?
What is a bibliography?
How do tell the difference between the independent and dependent variables?
What is a book resource you used for your writing assignment for the time capsule?
Why do we celebrate on the 4th of July?