Grade Level News

For the next several weeks we will be studying a unit called Food and Nutrition in your child’s classroom.  We will be doing some experiments that use common foods.  I may be asking your child to bring some small samples of foods to school for this purpose.  The foods might include items such as a handful of breakfast cereal, a spoonful of peanut butter, a piece of fruit, a couple of cookies, etc.
We are also assembling a collection of empty food containers of all kinds.  Packages with lists of ingredients and nutritional information are best.  Please save a few containers for our “food market”.
The Food and Nutrition unit is part of the Full Option Science System (FOSS) program.  Be sure to ask your child to tell you about the investigations we will be conducting.  I think you will find them quite interesting.
Unit 5 provides many activities designed to present and teach relevant data skills and concepts, allowing your child ample opportunities to practice organizing and analyzing the data he or she collects.
The data that your child initially collects will usually consist of an unorganized collection of numbers.  Several devices, such as number-line plots, tally charts, and bar graphs made from self-stick notes, are used throughout the lessons in Unit 5 to help your child organize data.
Part A of this unit focuses mainly on graphing.  Part B of this unit will primarily deals with probability.  There will be a separate assessment for each part of this unit.