Updates and announcements

As said previously, we hit the ground running after Spring Break. Students are busy at work and enjoying the warmer weather.

Students will be outside for PE until April 29^th due to the Prep AZMerit testing in the gym.

Students will be taking the writing portion of the AZMerit this Friday, March 31^st. Please be sure students are well rested and have a good breakfast.

Our week in learning

In Literature we will continue reading Across Five Aprils. We will have a class debate about fighting in the Civil War and will continue looking at vocabulary in context.

We will be taking the AZMerit writing test on Friday. To continue preparing we will be sharing our practice essays with the class and will look at sample persuasive essays.

We will have a quiz over roots 76-79 on Wednesday and will introduce our new poem, Barbara Frietchie. This is a long poem so students will be reciting this in groups on Wednesday, April 12th.

We are studying the human body. There is a skeleton quiz on Wednesday!

This week, students will take their Westward Expansion Before the Civil War test. The study guide is due Monday, 3/27. The unit test will be on Tuesday, 3/28. Students will also finish learning about US Geography with the West Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii. A study guide for the 50 states map test will go home on Wednesday, 3/29, due 4/5. The test will be on Wednesday, 4/12. We will start our unit on the Civil War this week. We are discussing slavery throughout the unit, with an emphasis on the life of a Civil War era American slave this week. This may be sensitive content for some students, so please have a discussion at home if needed.

This week the students will learn how to interpret a set of data in many ways- mean, median, mode, histograms, tables, and pie charts. There will be no math groups this week!

Updates and announcements

I hope everyone had a wonderful Spring Break! I was able to relax, work on a quilt, and pull some weeds.

We are running to the end of the year at this point. Along with our normal learning, we will also be taking the AZMerit, DIBELS, and MAP tests this quarter. Please keep an eye out for those dates on the “Important Dates” section.

Our week in learning

This week in Literature we will begin our next book, Across Five Aprils. Our focus for this book will be integrating our study of the Civil War in History with the novel. We will also be concentrating on vocabulary and defining words using context clues.

In Writing this week we will be preparing for the AZMerit writing test by using all of our block time today to use the writing process to write a five paragraph informative essay.  In order to give students immediate feedback on their writing each teacher will be conferencing individually with students about their essays. Our hope is that this gives them confidence in their writing abilities!

We will use the remainder of the week to review parts of speech, noun jobs, and add predicate adjectives to our diagramming.

This quarter, we will be learning all about the human body. We will start with the skeletal system this week. There will be a quiz on the human skeleton during the following week.

This week, students will finish learning about westward expansion before the Civil War. Students will cover the Mexican-American War, and settlers moving further west, such as the gold miners and the Mormons. The study guide is going home Tuesday, and it will be due Monday, 3/27. The unit test will be on Tuesday, 3/28.

We will finish Unit 11 this week by solving rate problems. We will have math groups on Wednesday and will take the unit test next Monday. If you are able to help with math groups, please let me know. We love having you in our classroom!

Updates and announcements

We are on the final stretch to Spring Break! Our students’ perseverance shows most during this exciting time.

Our week in learning

This week in Literature we will be using the character studies we have completed to complete a “Most Dynamic Character Award” writing prompt. Students will be writing a persuasive paragraph based on who they believe has changed the most in The Secret Garden. Please be sure your student has the novel, Across Five Aprils, which we will begin when we return from Spring Break.

In Grammar and Writing we will be reviewing similes and metaphors and will use these to describe the virtues.

The Tyger, by William Blake will be recited Wednesday, March 8th.

This week we will be studying the life of the famous botanist, George Washington Carver.

This week, students will continue learning about westward expansion before the Civil War. Students will cover the expansion of canals, invention of railroads, the Trail of Tears, Manifest Destiny, acquiring of Texas, and the settling of the Oregon territory. There is also a geography quiz over the Midwest, Rocky Mountain, and Great Plains regions on Wednesday, March 8th. Students will also be learning about the Southwest region in Geography.

Last week we began learning about finding averages, this week we will begin learning about rate. Math groups are back on this week on Wednesday from 8-9! Please let me know if you are able to help this week. Thank you!