We have a few more days of April left and then one more full month to go. Here is a look at our week ahead:
* Paige is our Star Student! We look forward to learning more about her!
* This is the last week for the kids to finish up their award winning book. The book is expected to be completed by May 5th. We will be completing a short writing assignment about the book in class.
* Midterms will go home with your child on Friday. This is a short summary of your child's progress as of Friday, April 25th. There are still many grades that will come in during this last month, so these are in no way final grades. It will just give you an idea of where your child is as of right now. Please sign one copy and return it by Thursday, May 8th.
* Our last MAP test will be Monday afternoon after lunch. This will be our reading test. Test scores will be sent home later in May.
* The kids are working on their short stories in WEX during our writing time. This week we will focus on the importance of speech tags, the correct use of dialogue, and learn about paragraphing. The kids have already written their situation, problem, and first rising action to their stories. We will be writing a second rising action and begin talking about a turning point this week.
* Our grammar focus this week will be possessive pronouns.
* We have been very busy with our new science unit. Last week our focus was on how water shapes the land. The kids made river tables and experienced the difference between erosion and weathering. This week we will work with abrasion. The kids will experiment with different types of rock: quartzite, pumice, limestone, sandstone, and slate. We will also experiment with glaciers. We will examine how glaciers erode the surface of the earth and observe melted glaciers to see how they deposit sediment they carry. We will also study the Ice Age and the effects of global warming.
* We are coming to the end of our unit in math. We will spend Monday using division to compare two quantities and using "times as many" language to compare. Tuesday the kids will take a practice test over the unit and Wednesday we will review in class. Thursday will be the Unit 8 test and Friday we will begin our new unit. A parent letter will be sent home explaining our upcoming unit: fractions, decimals, and percents.
* We will continue to work on determining importance in reading. The kids will continue to take notes on nonfiction reading passages in our large group practice. We will sort through our notes to determine the main idea and how it affects us as a reader. We will look for VIP (very important points) in our small group reading with fiction.
* I hope you have a great start to the new month. As always, if you have any questions, just let me know! ~ Mrs. Galazka
