It has been such a pleasure meeting with so many of you to talk about your wonderful children during conferences this week. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to support your children in all that we do at DGS. If you haven't yet scheduled a conference, please do so. If you would like to come next week, just shoot us an email and we will do our best to fit you in.
This has been a very short week, but we're cruising along in our reading of Animal Farm. Students have finished reading through chapter 5, and chapters 6 and 7 are due on Monday. After much group discussion about the book, it looks like students are enjoying this text. Today, I introduced the concept of propaganda. We read an article entitled, "Why Think About Propaganda?" and I introduced the 5 most common types of propaganda used in advertising. Through a Jigsaw activity, students were responsible for becoming the expert on one specific type of propaganda, and they had to teach their peers all about it. Ask your child about the various propaganda techniques, and why it's important to be aware of the messages surrounding us. Next week, we will begin thinking about our parody ads, and Miss Miller, the art teacher, will come teach the kids a lesson about layout and graphics in advertisements. I'm so excited! As always, be in touch with any specific questions or concerns. On Friday of last week, students worked to answer the unit question about how much time Dorothy would have saved if she could have walked along a secret underground tunnel instead of taking the Yellow Brick Road in the Land of Oz. This week students were amazing sports, taking two assessments back to back, their interim (designed to show progress) and the unit assessment for the Pythagorean Theorem. Today and Thursday, students will be launching into the next unit, all about Systems, by investigating the best possible combination of Gold Bars and Stacks of Money for thieves to take from a vault. As we explore systems in math, we will be looking at how two different lines intersect as well as a variety of solution methods for solving system questions.
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