Weekly Update-January 11, 2013

Dear Families,

Happy New Year!  You will see that we are hard at work.  Read all about it and please post a comment.

-Alites

Cynthia Rylant

By Logan, Kyra and Brian

This week we learned about an author named, Cynthia Rylant. We read her biography and learned that she loves animals, nature and family and is calm. She wrote the Henry and Mudge series, the Van Gogh Café and When I was Young In The Mountains.  We love her writing and can’t wait to read more of her books.  We are studying her craft and using her as a mentor for our own writing.  The biggest lesson we’ve learned from her is to write about the things you know.  She’s taught us to use our life experiences for inspiration. 

We Are All Mathematicians In The Alites Class

By Emilie, Madeline, and Adam 

This week we learned about the rules of divisibility. Basically, each number has a rule that tells you whether it will be divisible by another number. For example: if you wanted to see if 486 is divisible by 2 all you have to know is its rule. If a number ends in  0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 then it is divisible by 2. So, 486 is divisible by 2.

Also, we learned about prime and composite numbers. A prime number is a number that had only two factors which are and 1 and itself. A composite number has other factors in addition to one and itself. Overall, the Alites love learning about new things about math!

Jump Rope

By Steven, PJ, and Jared

In gym we are jump roping and practicing for our jump roping assessment. So far we are doing crosses and special moves like an elevator. We are also playing 4 Square. So this is how 4 Square goes, the person in the box tells every one to do special things like hopping on foot while jump roping or if you stop you will get out. On the day of the Jump-A-Thon you will have to continuously jump without stopping.  All five grades compete against each other. If you jump for over 3 minutes, you will get a prize.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

By Sakina and Becca

This week we started reading a new book- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At first we talked about the vocabulary that is used in the book. The author is British so some of the vocabulary is unfamiliar.  We also talked about this book’s genre-which is fantasy. It takes place during World War II. We haven’t met many characters yet. The book seems really interesting so far.

Cells and Classification

By Caitlin, Rachel, and Yunseo

This week, we have been learning about cells and classification (as you can see in the title). We have been studying the organelles (workers) of the cells. We have this rhyme which is: the workers of the cell are the cell’s organelles! We also learned about the 6 kingdoms of life which are: animals, plants, fungi, protests, true bacteria and ancient bacteria. The levels of classification are kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. At the end, we had a test on this material which we were really prepared for. We did an awesome job!

Pen Pals

By Stephanie, Chris, and Sanjyot

During our last Fun Friday we wrote to pen pals in Farmingdale. Some kids got 2 pen pals, others got one. Some of their names are Matthew, George and Jaclyn. In our first letter we wrote all about our hobbies, our families and our lives. We asked our pen pals to write us about their hobbies, favorite sports, and other things. We are wondering when we will get letters back from them! We hope it’s soon!

Economics

By Trevor and Michael

This week in social studies we learned all about economics. We learned some vocabulary words having to do with economics such as capital resources, natural resources, and goods. We are studying hard for our economics test this Friday! We learned the important difference between needs and wants. Wants are the things that we desire but do not need to live. Some of our favorite things like a phone, a T.V, and a computer are categorized as wants. Needs are things we require to live. Food, shelter and clothing are all needs. As you can see, we are learning a lot about economics and we yearn to know more!