May 5th, 2023

Dear families,
Sorry about this delay in posting. The students finished the blog on time, but this teacher had her hands a little full on Friday. Without further ado, here are my students' posts. Enjoy!
Science by Cora, Sam and Violet 
In science we have been working on Project Lead The Way (PLTW.) Project Lead The Way is a website with different things you can learn about. The thing we are learning about on PLTW is waves. We are not learning about the waves in the ocean but rather sound waves, and other waves in the air. Some new words we learned about waves are current, amplitude, trough, wavelength, frequency, and crest. In my opinion waves are a little difficult to understand and a little complicated when you first start learning about them. But overall they are still fun and interesting to learn about.
We did a project where we made sound waves. The materials we used were a plastic cup, plastic wrap, a rubber band, and a speaker. What we did was cut the bottom of the cup. Then we put the plastic wrap on the top of the cup tightly. We tied the plastic wrap with the included rubber band. Then we put the little speaker underneath the cup. After, we put salt on the plastic wrap and turned on the speaker. Then the salt all went together. It was very cool! You might be wondering what sound we used when we turned on the speaker. We used a sound wave simulator. The website the simulator was on is: https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/waves-intro/latest/waves-intro_en.html. We got the sound from the sound waves option. It was very fun. We have a PLTW packet we have to fill out and there was a page we had to do after the activity. The questions were asking us to experiment by doing different things with the project. Last week we were learning how the waves worked and we had a different simulator we were using. The link is: https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/wave-on-a-string/latest/wave-on-a-string_en.html. I would recommend checking out the links! 

​Math by Pepper, Abby S. and Emily 
Hello parents and students! This week in math we are working on different angles, how to measure angles, circumference diameters and the radius of a circle. The circumference of a circle is the distance around a circle, cylinder, or widest part of a sphere. The diameter of a circle is a line segment between two points on a circle that passes through the center of the circle. The radius is any line segment that extends from the center of a circle to a point on the circumference of the circle.
We have also been talking about angles, but today I will be telling you about protractors, and how we’ve learned to use them. We have learned about these protractors that on the top there is a number of degrees on the bottom it is like a centerline. There’s a bottom and top line and they both show degree. They both go from 0 to 180. We have learned how to measure angles and create different types of angles. We have practiced in our books. That helped us learn how to use it. 
An angle is "the figure formed by 2 rays or line segments that share an endpoint, often measured in terms of the amount of rotation (expressed as some number of degrees) needed to superimpose one of those rays or line segments onto the other.
Ray: a set of connected points that continues in one direction without end.
Acute angle: an angle with a measure of less than 90 degrees and a measure greater than 0 degrees

Daily 5, by Emmy, Abby Z. and Breanna 
In daily five we’ve been working on a book club, we all are separated by the book we've chosen. Pepper and I (Emmy) have been reading “Because of the rabbit” by Cynthia Lord. The book is about this girl named Emma who is home schooled with her bother but one day Emma’s brother wanted to go to public school, and from that day on she hasn’t hanged out with her bother. One night Emma’s dad gets a phone call about a bunny that is stuck in this lady’s fence. 
I (Abby Z.) have been reading "El Deafo", about this girl named Cece who got  meningitis and she loses  her hearing. She goes to a school with kids like her and a friend, but then she has to move. She got really sad about it, she goes to school but nobody is like her so she gets a new friend named Laura who is really bossy, and that’s all I’m telling you.
I’m (Bree) reading "Save me a seat" and it’s about a  Indian boy and an American boy who I think are going to be friends in the end of the book, and they both have different points of view in the book. 

Thank you for reading Ms Willinski’s class blog!