Friday, 1/16/09

Math
Today, we took our quiz. It was easy but you never know what you get until you look at it. After that, we worked on pages in our math journal. We're almost done. Once we finish that, we move on to Journal #2. We just have like 20 more pages or something. I'm excited. When everyone finished their quiz, we learned a new game called Finish First. We have a stack of cards (4's, 5's, 6's, 7's, and 8's) then we each take turns drawing cards. The person who draws the card that brings the amount to 21 or higher wins. Right now, my record is 2 wins and 10 losses because I always go first and every pair says that the first person loses a lot. It's true for me. Note to self: Go second next time.

Language Arts (L.A.)
Today, we did the second half of our centers. In the first one, we worked on plot. We read a story about a guy who dies trying to escape prison for a murder. After we read the sad and heart breaking story, we took a worksheet and read the direction. Since it is plot, we had to write down the original plot and then next to it, write our own that's made up. Mine is about a guy named Jacobo. He goes to prison and his cell has a well secured door and one very hard to find exit—a trap door. Now, the weird thing is, he is in jail in the sky. When he finds the trap door and triggers it, he falls to New York City, crashes through a mini-mart, thus grabbing the winning lottery ticket from a clueless old lady, as he falls! Amazing, isn't it? Once that center of craziness was over with, we chose something to do for our packet. We decided to do the Vocabulary. This was easy. We had the words tyrannies, ventured, vow, stowaway and one other that I don't remember. First, we had to write down what we thought it means and then, we look up the real definition in a dictionary. Very easy... EASY!!!

Science
Today, we took our Vocab Quiz on The Rock Cycle. We needed to know each word in the Vocab Words to this lesson. She pulled up the definitions on the smart board and it was up to us to know the right word. After that, we did a lab where we used clay to demonstrate the way rocks can change into different types. We started with igneous rock where each of us took a dab of clay and shoved little beads and pieces of paper to represent crystals. When we finished, we each broke and slapped our rocks together to form a sedimentary rock. Then we added heat and pressure to it to make it metamorphic rock. We then filled out questions and there, we finished the lab. Once it was over, we got to watch a Bill Nye The Science Guy video on rocks. Bill Nye is hilarious. He has weird sound effects and random cut scenes. But at the same time, he's giving you facts to help you learn them.