Updates and announcements

Can you believe how fast the first semester flew by? This is already my last post of the first quarter. I hope everyone has some exciting and/or relaxing plans for Fall Break! I’ll be getting ahead on my coursework (which will be a treat in and of itself), quilting, and hanging out with Cosmo and Gustav.

If you have a planned absence, please let me know as soon as possible so we can reschedule any assessments your child might miss.

On Friday, we will have our “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” party. Lunch is provided, so parents do not need to send a lunch this Friday.

Throughout the week, I will be inviting students to eat lunch with me to talk about how the first quarter went, and talk about friendship. Students will get their recess and I am really looking forward to a conversation with every student to wrap up our quarter.

Last week, we talked about prioritizing when the end of the quarter arrives and there are multiple assessments in a week. As a general reminder, study guides are always due before the test and we will go over the answers to the study guides in a review the day or two before the test. Students are welcome to ask questions about the study guide before it is due.

Our week in learning

This week, students will learn about the idiom “Few and far between”. We are done with poetry for quarter 2! In its place this week, we will have Socratic discussions about literature.

Students will have a test over the 25 roots learned this quarter on Wednesday, 10/3. We went over their study guides last week, so their study materials should be all correct. If there happen to be some missing, a quick google search will provide you with a root definition, origin, and derivative.

In Literature, we will have some guided discussion activities for “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. On Monday, we will be playing a game where students place all of the events from the book in chronological order.

In Writing and Grammar, we will finish our imaginary field trip paragraphs by revising in class, writing the final draft in class, then typing the final drafts on Friday morning. Students will read their written final drafts on Thursday as part of our “publishing” step of the writing process.

In Science, students will be reviewing concepts for their chemistry test that will be Thursday. Study guides are due Tuesday, and we will go over the information as a class. Students are encouraged to make their own study aids-this is a great chance to try their hand at making a Quizlet if they haven’t done so already!

This week in History students review Unit 3: Renaissance on Monday and take their test on Tuesday. On Wednesday we will continue with U.S. Geography, covering the Southwest (which includes Arizona!). On Thursday and Friday we will begin Unit 4: Reformation, creating a foldable to use throughout the entire unit.

In math, we will continue with our new unit on Fractions. We will spend quite a while on fractions this year, as it is along unit that will go well into the second quarter. This week, we will add, and subtract fractions and mixed numbers, and multiply fractions by a whole number. 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.