Weekly Reminders:*Lesson 2 spelling pretest on Monday.
*Curriculum Night on Thursday, 7:00. (PARENTS ONLY)
*Lesson 2 spelling test on Friday.
*Lakeview Band Performance on Friday afternoon.
Thank you to all who have donated items (paper plates, stickers, aquarium, fish food, popcorn, healthy treats, treasure box prizes, cotton balls, and much more) to our classroom. I appreciate your support!
Classroom Happenings:
Curriculum Night: On Thursday evening (7:00). I hope everyone can attend an informative, parents only, meeting. We will meet as a whole in the gym or multipurpose room at 7:00. Around 7:15, you will be dismissed to go to your child's homeroom classroom. At 7:30, your child's math teacher will give a short presentation. Finally at 7:45, you will visit with your child's Language Arts teacher. During this last meeting you will have the opportunity to sign up for a parent/teacher conference with your Language Arts teacher.
Science: We will continue our introductory unit by answering the essential question - What are Inquiry Skills? This question will help us understand the scientific process. There will be a quiz over lesson 2 on Thursday.
Social Studies: Our study of government continues. We will focus on the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch. We will have a short quiz on the Three Branches of Government on Friday.
Spelling: We are on to Lesson 2. Please help your child study for their spelling test which will be on Friday.
English: Each child in the class has a learning contract for our first unit on Capitalization and Punctuation. If you have not already, please discuss with your child what enrichment project they have chosen to do on the days they passed out of lessons. Enrichment projects are to be done in school. Please note that an "X" on the contract signifies that they have mastered the concept and will be working on enrichment instead of joining me for that lesson. Each English lesson will be around 20-30 minutes long. I have discussed with the children that they should have chosen an enrichment project that they will be able to finish in class. We will have English on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I do teach the lessons in the order that they are listed on the contract.
Reading: We will continue our review of predicting and inferring. The children are doing a wonderful job at predicting, reading, and proving or disproving their prediction. This is called self-monitoring. We will also focus on the author's viewpoint or the author's opinion or feelings about the topic which they are writing. This week the children will also get their first experience with a "book club." I have chosen a book for the entire class to do for the first book club. They will have reading assignments (some reading will need to be done at home) and book club discussion sheets that they will need to fill out. Each child will receive their book on Monday. They will also receive a calendar with due dates and a discussion sheet for the first book club discussion.
Accelerated Math: By Monday, the children should be fluent with their facts (x0 - x12) by being able to give the product without hesitation. We will continue our short review of fourth grade skills. This week we will practice estimating to find products, dividing by a 1 digit number (without and with remainders), using estimation to find quotients, and using compatible numbers to estimate quotients. Your child should bring home their math journal each evening to review these concepts. We will have an assessment on these items before we start the fifth grade textbook. This assessment will probably be on Thursday.
