Cluster 1 Newsletter

December 2, 2022

Hello Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers!

Hi All!

Progress reports will be posted December 23 to PowerSchool. Teachers are in the process of updating their online gradebooks, so please be patient. Thank you for continuing to support your learner and have a great December!

Yours,
Cluster 1 Team

English Language Arts Update

We’re working our way through our book club novels! Please make sure that your reader is keeping pace in their book. Some students are falling behind and will need support at home-- you could even read aloud with your student! As we approach the midway point of this unit, students are paying close attention to conflict and building towards an understanding of the theme of their novel. Next, we’ll begin our research-based informational writing unit after a short grammar bootcamp!

Math Update

Welcome! This week we kicked off our third unit of the year titled Unit Rates and Percentages. We started off the week by determining whether a certain unit measures length, area, time, mass, or volume. Then we compared the relative size of different units of measure for one attribute (i.e., length, volume, weight, or mass). We sorted cards with pictures of everyday objects to help us make connections between units of measurement and the best way to measure those objects. To stay in tune with our work in Unit 3, please check out the Unit 3 Family Resource.

Science Update

Make no bones about it! Students enjoyed dissecting owl pellets this week to determine what the ravenous raptors (owls) ate for dinner. Owls eat their prey whole. Hours later, they cough up a pellet containing the parts they can’t digest (bones, feathers, etc.). Sixth Grade Scientists made observations about the shapes of the bones they found. Then, they used various diagrams to recreate the skeletons of the owl’s prey. Through this, students made inferences about predator-prey relationships in an ecosystem. Ask your student about it! Check out our Cluster Instagram for some pictures of what we found!

Social Studies Update

This week we wrapped up our study of early humans. We’ve been diving deep into how environmental challenges drove human evolution by naturally selecting the hominids best adapted to survive. We finished our Walking with Cavemen documentary, and our hominid family tree assignment. We also completed our two hominid assessments, the Walking with Cavemen Reflection, and the Hominid Survival Poster. Next week we will move on to our study of the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras. Here students will begin to learn about how dramatically human life and civilization changed with the advent of farming.