Updates and announcements

It was so lovely getting to meet with all of you last week. The support at home helps make our school year successful.

Our Read a thon is next week! Time is flying. Be on the lookout for an email from our class moms. Costume proposals went out last week and are due to me by Friday.

Our week in learning

This week, students will learn about the idiom “The grass is always greener on the other side”.

Students will recite the poem “Narcissa” on 10/31, following the same two week schedule as last quarter.

Students will learn about the roots pais, schole, ludo, and iatros. 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. We will be looking out for foreshadowing and figurative language.

In Writing and Grammar, we review sentence diagramming and parts of speech. We will go over pronouns and the implied “you” subject in imperative statements or commands.

This week in science, students will continue their study of classification of the animal kingdom and begin their study of the fungi kingdom. We will take notes in class that will be used to study for quizzes and for homework assignments, so students should be coming home with their science notebooks often. Friday will be a science fair workshop day, with students receiving guidance on how to research their topics, as well as in class time with the computers to research. Science fair topic proposals are due by Friday, October 26th, but may be turned in earlier. Please review the list of due dates in the science fair packet with your child and be sure that the timeline works for your project. If you are planning to do a project that involves growing plants, you are encouraged to turn in your topic proposal earlier and begin experiments ahead of the recommended due dates.

This week in History we will learn about the spread of Protestantism, since we were not able to last week. On Wednesday, students will be quizzed on the States in the Rocky Mountain, Southwest, and West Coast regions. We will then learn about Alaska and Hawaii. Students can expect their quiz on all 50 States on Wednesday, November 7^th.

In math, we will continue with our unit on Fractions. We will spend quite a while on fractions this year. This week, we will convert measurement expressed as a mixed number to a smaller unit, convert a measurement expressed as a whole number to a fraction or a mixed number of a larger unit, and solve word problems that involve fractions of a whole. 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, October 24th, 8:00-9:15.