Weekly Update March 24, 2010

Upcoming Events:

Field Trip:

This coming Monday, March 29th,

to the Boeing Museum of Flight

Spring Break:

April 5th-9th

Here's What's Going on

in the Beacons' World:

Reading: Novel groups are doing very well. Students who are reading "Midnight on the Moon"are finishing up. They are loving how much they know about the moon as they follow the adventures of Jack and Annie. Students who are reading the "Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" have nearly completed the first four chapters. These Beacons' insights and comprehension are remarkable!

Writing: We've started our "Fabulous Fact Finding" for research reports! Students will learn how to choose appropriate subtopics and use tools in books to search for their information ie. index, tables of contents, heading and subheadings. Perhaps the most important lesson for them to learn is how to put their information into their own words!

Math: The students are really starting to get a solid grasp of measuring. They measured their shadows on the vernal equinox (and compared them to the autumnal equinox). We've also been putting those measuring and addition skills to the test as we work with perimeter. Thursday we began Area and square units! Wow, we are really learning big time math to apply in our everyday lives!

Science: We've reached the end to our time in space. The students created posters about a chosen deep space object. Check them out in the room- the kids can tell you all about black holes, supernovas, nebulae, Cepheid (hyper giant stars) , and the search for earth-like planets with the Kepler Space Telescope.

Social Studies: We've packed our bags and are traveling back in time to ancient Japan! We landed in "Edo", the old name for the capitol of Japan which, as you undoubtedly know, is called Tokyo today. We will be studying Japan to learn all the fascinating facts about this amazing culture. Students have learned about Japan's flag, the symbolism for the design and colors. The Japanese flag is a white banner whose center is a red circle which represents the sun. The Japanese flag is called "Hinomaru"which means "circle of the sun". In English it is often referred to as the "rising sun". This flag has been used for over a thousand years although no one knows who designed it or when. It was officially adopted as the flag of Imperial Japan on January 27, 1870. We also learned how to tell time the ancient Japanese way where they used the symbols of animals to designate the hours that elapse in a day instead of using numbers! Most importantly, we have learned how to write our names in Japanese!! It was a very exciting day yesterday when students got to wear name tags with their names written in Japanese!

Spring is when life's alive in everything. - Christina Rossetti

*Reminder that Tamara will be out of town next week. Betsy will be here all week covering for her.

Looking forward to another exciting week with your Beacon,

Betsy