Discovery Updates
Monday January 17
Hello!
We are expecting most of our students to be back in person tomorrow, despite one new positive case last Thursday that will keep some students in remote learning mode while they are in quarantine. Remember that if your child was possibly exposed, we contact you directly either by phone or text. If you have not been contacted, it means your child tested negative and was not exposed.
If your child is coming back to in-person on Tuesday for the first time since the winter break and has not been tested in school, please share a negative test result (thanks to all families who already did).
What are we working on?
In ELA children started their unit about the Harlem Renaissance following the reading of Harlen Summer by Walter Dean Myers. We will identify and analyze figurative language in Harlem Summer and explore it in our own writing.
Connecting to the story of Harlem we are starting to study human migration. What is human migration? What different types of migration occurred at different times, and what terms do we use to identify people who have migrated? As we learn about the Great Migration in the United States, we also make sure our responses to prompts restate the questions and provide direct answers.
The second term science unit started with readings that helped us define natural hazards and natural disasters. We participated in two V-labs with the Science 2 Students organization.
In Visual Arts class we learned about all the tools in Google Draw, a digital drawing program. During the first week, we used the program to make patterns from repeating forms, then we created either a face or a mask to explore creative opportunities and to use more complex tools.
In their math classes, fourth graders explored shading different fractional parts of the same whole. For example, sharing two-thirds (2/3) of 24 cars will be a different number of cars shared than if a person were to share two-thirds of 30 cars. We use area models to represent different wholes and develop more strategies to find equivalent fractions. We are starting to add fractions with the same denominator.
Fifth graders are reviewing how to compare and round decimals. We explain our answers using place value charts for comparing and ordering decimals, and number lines for rounding decimals.
Sixth graders realized that a percentage can be derived from a fraction and vice-versa. We used percent bars to represent fractions with percentages.
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Vaccination
If your child has recently received a shot, please make sure to let us know by uploading a picture of their vaccination card HERE.
Report cards & Start Strong scores
All families should have received the first term report cards, alongside the Start Strong scores. Please let us know if you didn’t receive these.back.
Feel free to reach out at dcretinon@discoverycs.org or text at (917)353-2262.
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