Math & Science Update

I'd like to provide you with a brief update of our curriculum for the remainder of the school year.

In Math, students finished their MCAS testing on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I saw many students making use of effective strategies while testing!  Before MCAS, students had been working on expressions and equations.  We will be continuing our work with expressions and equations into early June.  Students should be able to express various situations with an equation and solve those equations using different strategies.  Those strategies include using back tracking, a tape diagram, or algebra.  When we finish our unit on expressions and equations, we will do some more work on data and probability.

In Science, students recently finished our major unit on cells and body systems.  The culminating task required students to create a comic book which highlighted the journey of a food, oxygen, or water molecule's journey through at least two body systems.  In addition, students were asked to describe what happens at a cellular level.  We have moved on to our unit on fossils and evolution.  Students are learning how the fossil record gives us information about ancient organisms, their environments, extinctions, and how life forms have changed throughout Earth's history.  Additionally, students are learning how anatomical structures can show us relationships between and among ancient organisms and modern organisms.

When we complete our unit on fossils and evolution, we will be completing our final unit for the year which will cover waves and their properties.  Students will learn the various properties of waves and how light, sound, and electromagnetic waves behave.  Additionally, they will be learning about digital waves.