The Week of September 13th

Happy Monday! Hope you all had a great weekend! Here's a look at our week ahead:

Our theme this week in reading is "Adapting to Survive". We will focus on finding the main ideas and details using nonfiction text. The kids will also be working with cinquain poems so that we can learn more about metaphors and assonance.

In grammar we will tackle identifying complete subjects and predicates in a sentence. The kids will practice this each day with our DLA sentences as well as activities we do in class. We will have a short quiz over predicates and subjects on Friday.

Our spelling words this week have the long "a" sound. This can be made with "a-e", "ai", "ay", "eigh", and "ea" spellings. This week we will take our pretest on Monday. If a child misses 0,1, or 2 words on the pretest, then he/she will be given an alternate spelling this. This will still follow the same spelling pattern that we are working on as a whole class, however, the words will be more challenging. The students on the advanced list will also complete different activities in class to practice the spelling of these words. All work will be checked by me at the end of the week for an effort grade.

We have our district assessment tests this week. We call these MAP tests. The kids will be tested in both reading and math. We take these tests in the fall and spring of each year to give us information on the areas of reading and math. This helps us see areas your child is doing well on and the areas that we can target to help him/her in during the year. We will be taking our reading test on Wednesday afternoon as a whole class. The math test will be taken during our math time, so those students who go to Miss Lee for advanced math will take the test with her. Students in my math class will take the math MAP test Tuesday morning. Testing information and scores will be shared and discussed during fall conference times.

This week we will finish up Unit 1 in math. We will spend Monday reviewing key concepts of the chapter, going over vocabulary that we've learned, and looking over the study guide. Tuesday we will take our math MAP test, and Wednesday we will not have math due to conflicts in schedules with testing. Thursday we will begin Unit 2, which deals with using numbers and organizing data. The kids will then take their Unit 1 test on Friday. Your child will have all his/her homelinks, a study guide, a vocabulary practice book, and the geometry picture dictionary to help him/her study for the test. I will send home a parent letter explaining Unit 2 in further detail later on in the week.

In writing, the kids continue to learn why focus is so important in our written pieces. They have been working with taking short amount of text and adding their own details to this to help the piece become more focused and much more interesting to the reader.

In science, we continue to learn about volcanoes and plate tectonics. We will learn about pangea and how our earth has changed over the past million years. The kids will be working with the 4 ways that plates move: convergent, divergent, subduction, and transform. The kids will be writing songs to help them remember these vocabulary words. The students received a volcano extension project which is due September 24th. Your child should have shared the project options with you and chosen one to work on. If your child finishes the project early, then he/she is welcome to turn this in ahead of time. All projects are due on Friday, September 24th!

Chinese instruction begins this week. Our class will have Chinese on Tuesday and Thursday from 9:15-9:45. We're excited to get started and to learn more about the language!

Thanks to all who ordered books! Book orders will be placed Monday, so we should receive our order by the beginning of next week.

MVP of the week began this week. This is our classroom's star student. I will be sharing myself as the MVP of the week this week to show the children how their posters can look and what types of things to bring in. Your child will be notified one week before their "MVP week" is assigned. He/she will then receive the poster to fill in and share, along with additional information about the week. Be on the lookout for an envelope addressed to the parents that includes an idea to surprise your MVP during his/her special week. MVP weeks will be only on weeks we have a full week of school. This will take us to through the end of the year.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know! Have a great rest of your week!