I hope everyone had a great holiday and break! Thanks to all of the parents who came in to discuss your child's progress with both Mrs. Born and myself. We are so thankful for all of your support at home. I'm looking forward to another great trimester with the kids. Second trimester is filled to the brim with curriculum, increased expectations, and lots of fun activities. Here is a look at our week ahead:
* If you have not sent in your report card envelope, please do so. We will use these for both second and third trimesters this year. Everything inside the report card envelope is yours to keep--we just need the envelope itself.
* Scholastic order forms are going home with the kids on Monday. Since there are only a few weeks until winter break, the deadline for orders is Monday, December 9th. This will allow time for us to receive the books on time. If you would like any to be a surprise or gifts, please send me an email and I can put them to the side for you.
* Our genre of the month is fantasy. The kids are encouraged to read at least one to two books in this genre through the month of December. We will be working with this genre in class as well. As we study the different characteristics of this unique genre, the kids will be able to make connections to their own reading at home.
* In reading we continue to study nonfiction text structures. This week we will learn about sequence, description, and problem/solution. The kids are using various articles to help them identify key words and organize information. We will continue to use our Time for Kids, nonfiction leveled books, and internet articles in our learning.
* In writing, the kids are trying to convince Ms. Boston of a field trip. The sky is the limit on where we can go BUT your child's job is to make her believe that it is an educational field trip that we cannot miss out on. We will work with organizing our ideas into paragraphs, using transition words, and continuing to study the genre of opinion writing.
* Action verbs are the focus of grammar this week. We will work to use them in different tenses, as well as making sure that they agree with the subject of the sentence.
* In social studies, we finished up Chapter 1 of History Alive. The kids will be getting this tests back in the beginning of the week. We will then work to finish up our LMC research project on the Native Americans. The kids are working in their partnerships to create a Prezi presentation on the iPads. Theses presentations will be shown to the class as we help each other learn about the different tribes and regions that the Native Americans lived in.
* We will begin our new science unit on electricity this week! The kids will focus on static electricity for the first part of our unit. We will be doing various activities in class to learn about the concepts of atoms. Lots of hands on activities are in the future for our class---so much fun to do!
* In math, the kids took the Unit 4 test before break. We will go over this test in class on Monday and the kids will work on the second part of this test, which involves a simple word problem. The kids will be expected to make corrections to the missed test questions. Those who received less than a 70% will be able to earn some extra points to help get their grade back up to a C. We will then move on to Unit 5. A parent letter explaining this unit will come home with your child in the beginning of the week. Unit 5 focuses on big numbers, estimation, and computation. We will rely on our multiplication and division skills for this unit---I cannot stress enough how important practicing those facts are!!!! We will work to multiply multi-digit numbers, write estimates for problems, and practice using exponents to represent large numbers.
* Ivy Hill 4th and 5th graders will be participating in a geography bee! The first round of this will be done in our classroom next week. Why geography? Feel free to visit this link to find out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri0_ijyFni4 I have included some websites on our blog that can help the kids get some more background information for the geography bee. Please know that this is not anything that the kids are going to be graded on, nor will it affect their report cards. It is truly to give them an opportunity to learn more about the world around them and have some fun with it.
* I hope you have a wonderful start to December! If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to ask! ~ Mrs. Galazka
