Algebraic Thinking

Announcements:

• Parent teacher interviews are next Thursday, March 14th - Sign up is online (instructions went home in a letter last week)
• Students who have not completed the Heat Story or Atomic Comic can come in for extra help at lunch or after school
• Jelly Bean Fundraising sheet is due back next Monday, March 11th

Math: 

Recently week we started a new unit, Patterns and Linear Relations. 

Students have been observing visual patterns (http://www.visualpatterns.org/) and describing how the pattern changes from one shape number to the next. The more specific they can be the better. 

Try at Home:

• Can you describe in words what is happening from one figure to the next?
• Can you draw the fourth figure? 
• What would the first figure look like?
• Make a table of figure number (input) to number of squared
• Can you make a general rule that would work for any figure number? 

Today we played a game where we generated tables with multiplicative rules (e.g. output = input x 3). Each student played the robot, or rule generator, and the other students guessed the rule from the table values.

Students who would like more practice solving in/out tables or figuring out the rule to tables can go to IXL https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-5/multiplication-input-output-tables-find-the-rule or Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-fifth-grade-math/cc-5th-algebraic-thinking/modal/e/write-a-2-variable-relationship  

They can also get a membership for free at https://solveme.edc.org/Mobiles.html and practice mobile problems that teach algebraic logic.

Science:

We are learning about Heat Transfer, Particle Matter, and States of Matter. Yesterday we watched Bill Nye "Phases of Matter." 

Eureka also has some good videos about heat transfer and heat concepts. 

Today we did an Ice Cube Experiment. The question was:
"Which ice cube will melt faster, the one on the frying pan (at room temperature) or the one on the laminated wood desk?"

Students wrote a hypothesis including If, then, because method. They then watched the experiment and made observations and wrote a conclusion that stated if the hypothesis was correct or incorrect, why what they observed occurred, and any experimental errors.

This is something you could easily try at home!

Later in the week we will begin the Ice Box Challenge project and students can apply some of the heat transfer concepts they learned today to their designs.