Dr. Johnson's Reading Blog

Impact Projects You may have heard your 5th grader talking about a major project that we will be using to cap off our experience at the Center for Inquiry. The teachers have envisioned this as a project that will be rooted in your child's personal interests presently and the future they wish to build as they grow older. As we prepare for this project, we have asked them to consider the ways in which they seek to have an impact on their community, school, family, and self. Over the past several weeks, your fifth grader has been meeting with their teacher developing potential topics for these projects. Many of these topics are related to a service they find to be of interest like pet abuse or homelessness, but some of these topics are personal interests like plastics, Mexico, or children with special needs. Dr. Whitecotton and I are currently in the process of helping them narrow down their topics. Once a topic is chosen each fifth grader will develop a Past, Present, and

Thank you to everyone who was supportive of our Camp Kanuga trip. I believe the trip was a success and lots of memories were created. On Wednesday, we spent our outdoors activities while it lightly snowed. Thursday was windy, but no one complained about being cold. And Friday, no one will forget our bus break down. This was just a delightful trip. I believe everyone had a great time, challenged themselves in some way, and learned a little bit about ponds and streams, and mountain ecology. I have uploaded a few photos from my camera here . I think I have a few more photos that did not upload. I will also try to get more photos from the other groups and upload them here. Have a restful weekend. See everyone on Monday!

Today we continued playing around with balanced and unbalanced forces. So today we an activity in which students sat laid down on chairs with their heads on another person's lap. The chairs were pulled out. If forces were balanced, students should be able to stay up (not for long).  Here are some pictures of students laying down in chairs then having the chairs pulled out while balancing.

This morning we were looking at balanced and unbalanced forces. We decided to engage in this activity which we felt illustrated both balanced forces (when it works right) and a group challenge.

Some new information has come up so I wanted to write a new blog post about some of our upcoming events. Thursday, March 15 (7:15-8:00) - Instead of having a traditional Curriculum Night, we will have our Camp Kanuga informational meeting. While this is a parents only meeting (we'll have a separate meeting for students), we will have room available for students. Monday, March 19 and Tuesday, March 20 - On these dates we will be MAP testing. Monday will be reading and Tuesday will be math. Wednesday, March 21 - Friday, March 23 - Camp Kanuga trip Science - We are just beginning our last unit on Forces & Motion. We spent the day building on what we already knew about force and motion and relating this knowledge to balanced and unbalanced forces. Math - We are playing a game called "In Between." This game helps students order fractions and get a better sense of converting fractions to percentages. Social Studies - We have finished our study of WWII and