Rocks, Minerals and Percent of a Number

Announcements:

• Semester 2 classes and new exploratories start tomorrow (Monday, January 21st) 
• Every class at Ernest Morrow has selected a student to attend the My World Conference leadership on February 21st. Congratulations to those who were selected!
• Report cards will be going home at the end of January (Thursday, January 31st)
• I am available at lunch and after school tomorrow and Tuesday if anyone would like extra Math practice before the Quiz Wednesday

Math:

This week students learned to convert between percent, fractions, and decimals. They made posters, practiced various techniques, and assembled and then built their own percent puzzles (with Ms. Logan as a guest teacher on Friday). The goal of these activities was to help students understand the underlying concept of percent rather than just memorizing steps. 

Students continued practicing communicating their math understanding with Math Talks. These questions aimed to help deepen understanding of part of a whole and how this can be expressed as a fraction, percent or decimal. Number Talk 5 arguably has no one right answer, as students could argue that any of the four do not belong for different reasons (as demonstrated in the photo). In Math Talks students are graded on their use of Math language and their ability to explain their thinking.

Thursday we began solving Percent of a Number word problems using hundreds grids. This week students will continue practicing solving Percent of a Number problems. 

There will be a Percent of a Number Quiz on Wednesday. Students are encouraged to come see me for extra help if needed.

Science:

We continued to explore Rocks and Minerals last week. Monday and Wednesday we did the Mineral Identification lab. Students had the opportunity to test ten or more samples. They assessed properties including colour, streak, lustre, and hardness. Have your student explain these tests if you have some free time. Students were very careful with the samples and did their best to think like scientists. This is a very tricky lab and students were quite successful in determining which samples they were testing. 

They also wrote a short Rock and Mineral Quiz and we marked the quiz in class in the hopes to learn from our misconceptions. Tomorrow we will revisit the Rock Cycle, as this is a concept many students were not very familiar with. If students missed this concept they can also read more about the Rock Cycle.

We finished the week by making observations about a rather ordinary looking rock. We then opened it up to find crystals within and it turned out to be a geode!

This week we will also research period os the Geologic Time Scale and the organisms and landscape that existed on Earth in those time periods. We will also make fossil models out of clay and learn about indigenous story telling and another perspective for explaining glacial erratics, specifically the Big Rock in Okotoks, with Jill Harbour, our Indigenous Coach. 

Looking forward to a fun week!