Thanks so much to everyone who was able to join me last night for Back to School Night Part 2. If you weren’t able to attend or want to double check anything I have posted the slideshow in the Family Resources folder on our Homeroom page. Please let me know if you have questions at any time.
From Mrs. Lucas: Students will need a paper ball and 2 tennis shoes on their feet this week. 1 shoe they will be wearing and the other shoe they will be catching.
PTA Reflections: Use the arts to share your personal Reflections on this year’s theme: I Matter Because…Submissions are due to Amy Nolan and Lisa Ross by November 1, 2020. All submissions must be done virtually and must be submitted with attached entry form to: lkross12@yahoo.com or apicknolan@gmail.com I attached the PTA poster to the email I sent on Friday afternoon.
Important Dates:
10/22 Decimals Test – place value, ordering and comparing, and rounding
10/23 Word Trek Quizzes Lesson 6 – This is a review unit
10/27 Weather Unit Test
10/30 Mystery Book Reports Due
11/6 PE assignments due for Mrs. Lucas
MATH
This coming week we will begin working with decimal computation. The students will have examples and notes in their notebooks. There are also notes on each operation in the Student Resources folder. I will be encouraging them to use the notes while completing classwork and homework. The biggest trick to decimal computation is that pesky decimal. When adding and subtracting, the decimals need to be lined up. Not so with multiplication and division. The students will do really well if they have the notes in front of them and, therefore, practice correctly. There will be a test on decimals on Thursday, October 22nd. It will include decimal place value, rounding decimals, and comparing and ordering decimals. Homework will help prepare students for the assessment so completing it correctly will be important. The students have examples of what’s on the test in their notebooks, and there are notes in the Math folder in the Student Resources folder. We will also continue working through double digit division in small groups.
LANGUAGE ARTS
We are in the last chapters of Because of Mr. Terupt, and the students are sad to see it end! It is such an emotional book that allows the students to see true character development as well as recognize that everyone is dealing with something. Their final project for this novel is going to involve choosing a character to explore. They will have several choices from Flipgrid videos to Google slideshows to using a newspaper template and everything in between to show how their character has changed throughout the story and the events that led to the changes. They will receive a rubric and project paperwork outlining expectations and possibilities. I am super excited to see what they will do! It is going to be amazing!!
Our Word Trek unit this week is a review unit. It covers all of the words from units 1-5. The homework will walk them through each unit helping them to remember and prepare. The spelling quiz will have 30 words, 6 from each unit, on it. You can find the definitions for these units in the Past Weeks folder on the Homework slides. The fabulous news is that that our Spelling City subscription has been renewed! I encourage the students to get on it as soon as possible to start playing games to review. Their username is their computer login and the password is gaesspell. We will also use it in class. All students are expected to use this program. It is a great program and definitely helps them prepare. My suggestion for how to do Word Trek home has always been to complete one page each night. Then students should get on Spelling City with the definitions in front of them and play games for 10 minutes or so. That way they are not waiting until Thursday night to review the words. Please let me know if you have questions.
We will continue reading Running Out of Time in our small groups. It is getting very exciting! We will also focus on Aha! moments, text features in nonfiction, and theme. The Mystery Book Report is due on Friday, October 30th. I continue to encourage the students to use their free time in class to work on this. Please remind them that there may be questions or parts of their project that they can start before finishing the book. Leaving all of the response questions and the project to the last week can be a miserable experience for everyone. On the nights that they don’t have much homework are a great time to do something on the book report. Please let me know if you have questions about the book report.
We will continue working on My Favorite Holiday using bing, bang, and bongo. They used a graphic organizer to do their planning and write the introduction and conclusion this past week. This can be found on their Google Drive if you’d like to check it out. This is a great method for expository writing and might be something they can use on December 1st when doing the Moody application prompt.
SCIENCE
We will continue reviewing the fourth grade unit on Weather. As this is previously taught material, we will move through it fairly quickly. We have reviewed clouds, the weather they bring, and weather tools. This week we will look at storms, fronts, and predicting the weather. There will be an open notes classwork assessment on Thursday. Your student should have notes in their notebook. There are also notes in the Student Resources folder and they have a study in their digital My Weather Notebook on their Google Drive. Please encourage your student to use the portaportal as well as the games on the Science page of this blog to review as well. Being engaged in class will also greatly help bring this material back to the front of their brains. The test on this unit is on Tuesday, October 27th.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We have finished Henrico County are moving on to map skills. This week we will look at different types of maps and what they show. The students will also review the parts of a map and how to read it as well as focus on geography terms. Next week we will begin working with longitude and latitude.