Updates and announcements
Welcome back! I hope everyone
had a wonderful Winter Break! We had very restful break which included a lovely
visit with Paul’s family up in Montana for a week, lots of baking, sewing,
crocheting, and kitten cuddles.
Thank
you for taking the time to complete the latest homework survey. We looked
carefully at the numeric data and anonymous comments and had good conversation
as a team. Every child is unique and homework experiences vary widely,
but there are occasional patterns in these surveys that help us to adjust our
homework assignments. With this in mind, we are going to make a few
adjustments in the third quarter that will hopefully make the homework
experience more joyful without sacrificing good learning. We will
continue to discuss as a team and will send another survey near the end of
third quarter. Beginning January 7th, parents and students can
look forward to the following changes:
*Students
will do ½ of every type of workbook problems.
*Students
will have little to no history and science homework. Students will have time at
the end of class periods to work on study guides.
Our week in learning
This week, students will learn about the idiom “Sit
on the fence”.
Students will learn about the roots naus, navis,
homos, and heteros. They will be quizzed on these roots next week. Students
should expect a similar quiz every week over the previous week’s roots.
In Literature, we will start reading “The Secret
Garden”. We will start the week by learning about the background behind the
setting of the story. Please send in “The Secret Garden” book by Monday,
January 14.
In Writing and Grammar, students will review parts
of speech and learn about transitive verbs and indirect objects. We will begin
our Explorers research essay on Friday. A packet will be coming home with
information. Most of the work will be done in class, however students will need
to have at least one book source and one online source by Tuesday, January
22nd.
In
Science, we will begin quarter 3 by starting of our study of botany. We will
begin by comparing plants and animals to draw on what we have learned
throughout the quarter before diving into the characteristics of plants and the
major phyla. We will continue learning about the characteristics of these phyla
for the rest of the week.
This week in History, students
will start their unit on the Age of Exploration. We will learn about Marco
Polo, the Spice Islands, and the instruments that were used to explore during
this age. We will finish the week by exploring some of the routes taken from
Portugal, and what travels were like for sailors, including how to avoid scurvy.
In
math, we will start a very short unit on ratio. Starting this week, ALL
workbook homework assignments will be half of every type of problem. We will
explain what this looks like to the class and sample the first few homework
assignments with them. There will be a short quiz over ration next Monday,
January 14, then we will switch to the “5B” books.
