Week of Oct. 1 - Oct. 5

DATES:
Saturday Oct. 6.............EVERYTHING FOR KIDS SALE - 9am -2 pm
Friday, Oct. 12.............Outdoor Discovery Center Field Trip
Oct. 9th and 10th.........MEAP Testing


MEAP Testing is Tuesday and Wednesday. Please be sure your children are well-rested, have a good breakfast, and a snack. I keep animal crackers at school all of the time for those who need snacks!


READ-A-THON: Thank you so much for your support! The kids relaxed and read today. It is good for them to be able to have sustained reading time and build that stamina!  We will let you know about a field trip we are planning for 4th and 5th graders.

Field Trip- We have a field trip to the Outdoor Discovery Center on October 12th. A note was sent home again today on a pink half sheet. We will not need parent volunteers for this event.
  
iPADS:  Your child may have mentioned we  used iPads Thursday. 4th and 5th grade have 30 to share. We are planing to each use 5 in our classrooms in order to have them in our rooms every day. We are waiting on information as to how we should download apps, etc. before we can do much else. Hopefully next week, we will be using them!

Math:
We continue MEAP review prep. Students took the test for Patterns and Relationships which required them to use function tables and coordinate graphing. I am very proud of how well they did! Our next unit is Place Value. This encompasses more concepts and the test will be a little longer. I will post tutorials on my fusion page as well as sites for them to practice. 
 Students also took the 6th grade Delta math assessment as a pretest for when they will take it in May.


MATH FACTS: Please practice math facts with your child. Keeping a set in the car may be a good idea. A few minutes frequently during the week will be quite helpful.

Reading:
We have continued to work on MEAP Prep., comprehension strategies, and reading for information strategies this week. We read Encounter by Jane Yolen which is the first book in the genre unit we are beginning. The central theme is Dealing with Change. We discussed character, setting, events, problem, resolution, and theme. Students incorporated this into a flipbook. This story also had a lot of imagery which we discussed by using background knowledge, picture, and text clues.

HOMEWORK: Reading at home: I am hoping students have been reading at home frequently. Monday, October 1st we began our first monthly reading assignment. Students chose a novel and will read this over the month of October. They will create a project in order to share their book with the class. Presenting a project to the class can be quite stressful for kids. I try to make this as comfortable as possible!    



Writing:
  I am keeping your child's summer writing piece as I will use this to show them their growth as the year progresses. I will share it at conferences. This week we have practiced writing a persuasive piece and a summary. I will keep these for now and these are practice, not graded pieces. We also began a narrative piece that is based off of the book, Daisy Comes Home.

Spelling:
  Spelling tests are every Friday. Monday begins the new lesson. The skill for Lesson 5 is the sounds of /k/. The spelling list will be sent home Monday.  If you go on my fusion page, there are directions to get to Spelling City where students can play games and take practice tests over the spelling lists for each week.


Science:
We have been learning about the moon phases and the solar and lunar eclipses.