Trimester 3 Week beginning 27th February

What's happening this month

Writing:

We have finished our Persuasive writing essays, and will be moving onto Literary Essays.
In this unit, the essential questions are:

• What is a literary essay?
• What are the key components of a literary essay?

The students will know by the end of this unit:

• the structure of a literary essay (opening, 3 statements with supporting evidence, closing)
• literary essay language
• how to make statements about author's craft, connections, characters, questions
• the qualities of a good literary essay
• to plan their essay in their Reader's Notebook

Assessment:
By the need of the unit each student should have published at least one literary essay which will be marked using a rubric.

Reading:
Character Development study
I this unit the students will be looking at the following essential questions:

• What makes a good fiction story?
• What are the elements of a fiction story?

By the end of this unit, the students will be able to:

• To use the story elements to guide understanding.
• T focus on characters behaviors in order to describe him or her.
• To pay attention to what characters say.
• To pay attention to characters actions.
• To pay attention to what or how character thinks.
• To name character traits to describe character actions
• To describe a character by paying attention to how a character is affected by other characters in a story.
• To gather evidence from text to support thought
• To develop an idea
• To compare and contrast characters and story events.
• Characters change in stories - characters are good problem solvers (sometimes)
• To make personal and text-to-text connections
• To identify author's message and issues
• To work with a partner and a book of same title (independent level) to discuss character development

Assessment:
Oral retelling of findings
Character maps and story maps will be used

Science:
Rocks and Minerals

In connection with land biomes and natural resources, two Social Studies themes that we will investigate all year, students will use their natural curiosity and observations about the land around them to determine what minerals make up various kinds of rocks.

In order to better understand how biomes are formed, students will investigate how different minerals create the properties of the land they form.

Investigation 1 Completed

• What are some of the properties we can use to describe individual rocks?
• How can we determine the ingredients of a rock?
• How can we separate the ingredients of a rock?
• What are the ingredients in mock rocks?
• What evidence do you have to support your conclusions?

Investigation 2 Completed

• What properties can we use to identify minerals?
• How can your fingernail, a penny, and a paperclip help determine hardness.

Investigation 3 Completed

• How can we tell if one of the ingredients in a rock is the mineral calcite?
• Is there another test we can do to know for sure which rocks contain calcite?

Investigation 4 Ongoing

• What are the mineral ingredients in granite?

Assessments:

• Ongoing informal assessments made after each investigation.
• Short written assessments after each investigation.
• Project and presentation (homework)
• Final Unit test

Mathematics:
Mid year test (completed)

Our next unit is: Multiplication patterns (Two week unit)

The essential questions for this unit:

• What is multiplication?
• What is the relationship between multiplication and division?
• What are factors?
• What are square numbers?
• What it is a prime number?
• What are turn-around rules?
• How do turn-around rules work with multiplication?
• How do turn-around rules work with division?

Assessments:

The children will show evidence of their learning in the following ways:

• Discussions
• Explanations
• Representations using arrays
• Number sentences multiplication and division
• Explanations of multiplication strategies
• Solutions to problems involving money
• Solutions to multiplication and division problems
• Mad Minute Facts
• End of unit test