Updates and announcements

I hope everyone had a wonderful Fall Break! I accomplished many things, including finishing up two of my classes early!

This week, every day is a half day due to parent teacher conferences. If you have not already done so, please sign up for a conference. There are some slots still open on Wednesday. If none of those times work for you, please reach out and we will schedule a different day.

Our week in learning

This week, students will learn about the idiom “Forty winks”.

In poetry this week, students will learn about the poem “Narcissa”. Students will recite this poem on 10/31, following the same two week schedule as last quarter.

Students will learn about the roots anthropos, vir, and femina. There will be a roots quiz over these next Wednesday, following the same schedule as last year. Students should expect a similar roots quiz every Wednesday over the roots learned the previous week.

In Literature, we will start reading “Where the Red Fern Grows” on Tuesday, October 23rd. Please send in your child’s copy of the book by Tuesday.

In Writing and Grammar, we review sentence diagramming and parts of speech. Students will also practice their descriptive writing skills by writing short paragraphs for homework.

This week, students will begin their unit on classification. They will begin with a series of Socratic in class activities to help them understand how scientists classify and its importance in the study of living organisms. Students will use their science notebooks to help them study for short quizzes throughout the unit. There will be a short quiz next Tuesday over classifying and the animal kingdom.

This week in History we will begin instruction in Unit 4: Reformation. We will discuss how the Renaissance affected change in some religious views during this time, including the birth and spread of Protestantism. For U.S. Geography on Wednesday, we will study the Northwest.

In math, we will continue with our new unit on Fractions. We will spend quite a while on fractions this year. This week, we will compare fractions with the help of benchmark fractions, multiply a fraction by a whole number, and convert a measurement expressed as a fraction of a unit to a smaller unit. 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. There will be no math groups or tutoring this week.