Math and Science Update- January

Happy new year!

As we enter the new year, it is important to keep steady the school year's momentum.  This time of year can sometimes be the most challenging given the short days and colder temperatures.  Be sure to check your child's binder and planner every night and to cross-check this with our homework pages.  With that said, let's take a look at where we've been and where we're going in both science and math.

In math, students are finishing up our unit on decimal operations.  Students have been practicing their skills in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing with decimal numbers.  It is important for students to keep their work very organized and make reasonable estimates to check their answers.  This unit on decimal operations should come to a close at the end of next week, around January 12th.

From there, we will shift our focus to ratios and proportions.  Students will use ratios to compare quantities of different things in part-to-part ratios as well as part-to-whole ratios.  Additionally, students will use these ratios to help them solve real world problems.  They may also need to use pre-algebraic thinking to solve for missing parts in proportions.

In science, we have been working through our unit on plate tectonics and the theory of continental drift.  Students have been studying the evidence presented by Alfred Wegener and the scientists who followed.  The culminating task for this unit has students writing a letter to the science community of the 1950's urging them to accept Wegener's hypothesis and accept it as a theory.

After we complete this unit, we will move on to rock layers and the law of superposition.  Students will learn about relative dating, cross-cutting, and the law of superposition.  After rock layers, we will move to other topics in Earth and Space science, including gravity, the earth, moon, and sun system, and the Milky Way Galaxy.