Updates and announcements

I hope everyone had a restful weekend. We had an exciting weekend full of scorpions! After six months being scorpion free, we found two this weekend.

We have a busy week ahead of us with Picture Day on Thursday and Grandparents’ Day on Friday.

Be sure to have your child check the due dates board in the classroom. Our regularly scheduled assessments are there, as well as big assignment due dates.

Our week in learning

This week, students will learn about the idiom “Eureka”. As a routine, students will have two weeks to memorize their poems. This will be a regular rotation and the recite date will be on the “Due Dates” section of the board. “Some Opposites”, will be recited on 9/26.

Students will continue learning Greek and Latin roots, learning theos, deus, divinus, and homo. Students will have a weekly quiz over these roots next week. This is the last week of new roots. Students will start reviewing for their 25 root test at the end of the quarter.

In Literature, we will read through chapter 14 in “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. We will focus on summaries and identifying and defining vocabulary words from the chapter. Please note that not all classes will be in the same part of the chapter every day, but should end the week on the same chapter.

In Writing and Grammar, we get to start descriptive writing. For this, we will describe a sandwich using our five senses. Students will also get to draw an imaginary creature from Narnia, write a descriptive paragraph about their character, exchange descriptive paragraphs and have another student draw their creature based off their paragraph. We will explore how the paragraphs could have been improved to make the drawings more similar.

This week in science, students will begin the Chemistry that will last until the end of the quarter. Students will discuss the concept of matter using a hands on demonstration, and then begin studying the Periodic Table. Students will then learn about atoms and how they form into molecules and compounds in preparation for an exciting lab this week. There will be a short vocabulary quiz on Friday covering the vocab learned throughout the week.

This week in History we will continue with our unit on the Renaissance. Students will learn about the cities of Florence, Rome, and Venice and their role in the Renaissance. Students will also discuss the Popes and their role during this cultural shift in the West. We will finish on Friday by studying the artist, Leonardo da Vinci. In U.S. Geography on Wednesday, students will be quizzed on the States in the regions of the Midwest and Great Plains. We will also discuss the Rocky Mountain region, covering the States of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.

In math, we will finish our new unit on “More Calculations with Whole Numbers”. We will practice dividing by 2 digit numbers, complete word problems with division and multiplication, and review for their unit test, which will be on Thursday, September 20th. We will be using graph paper, so feel free to use graph paper at home to help keep students organized. Please note that we will have frequent quizzes in math. When a “b” quiz comes home for homework, that means there will likely be a quiz the next day. This means there will be frequent, low stakes math quizzes. We will continue math groups on Wednesday, 8:00-9:15.