Whew! What a week! (revised)

Testing testing testing....is over! Well, I´m down to one boy, one test. And it will no longer take up class time.

How did it go for YOUR child? Well, most students took seven tests, and the typical student finished a single test in 50 to 80 minutes. Some needed longer, some shorter. So you might assume your student spend around 10 hours testing this Spring. However, with so many students so frequently absent, and more pulled out for this and that, your child sat silent in a testing environment for double to triple that. Assume that your child READ a lot, and you would probably be right!

But, itś over. I won´t have results until I am out of contact with you, but will find out just after you do how your child did.

And so, on to...what? I pretty much stopped everything else the four short days of this week. So much going on besides meant that our fantasy unit was derailed, science only sputtered to a restart, health fizzled out, and I couldn't really teach or help kids in Math. My big hope this last full week is to resume learning!

We will continue a bit of Math in the mornings, but the bulk of the class has moved through the lessons about the coordinate plane, even taking the final test. I gave those back today - and the big fraction/decimal test, hardest of the year - and asked kids to make sure you got them. (You should also have gotten the cake art project!) Next week I will offer kids choices for independent study in math: Continue Zearn units, Dreambox, or Khan Academy. I suspect many will chose this last, with its Pixar in a Box feature.

Most of our energy will go into moving our health and science studies along. I also hope to show a few videos about the US government. Science will probably take up most of the week, however.

Speaking of Science, here's a bit about it:

This week in science we're answered the question: “Who set the first clock?" We made shadow clocks (sundials), learned about telling time by the Sun, and found out how (and why) people first divided the day into hours.

When students bring the sundial home, I suggest you help set it up in the sun with the north-pointing arrow pointing to north. When you and your child watch the shadow move over the course of the day, you might point out that the shadow moves clockwise around the dial.

That’s no coincidence. The first clockmakers patterned the movement of the clock hands on what people were used to: the shadow clock. And here’s a fun fact to share with your child: back before there were clocks, people used the word “sunwise” to describe the direction we now call “clockwise.”

Here is a link to this lesson. The link expires in 10 days. Students absent (and Miles, who was a helper in Art) need to watch this before completing an assignment posted to the Pond. Watch this with your son/daughter, and you wiĺl see what we did with the sundial that he/she brought home. I have asked all students to try out this sundial in the weekend sunshine! They will need a compass....

Here is the link: Who set the first clock?