October 12

Tuesday, October 15...................MEAP Math Testing
Wednesday, October 16..............MEAP Science (5th grade only)
Friday, Oct. 18 PTO Popcorn .... $.25/bag

Homework:  
Reading: Reading at least an average of 20 minutes at home most days of the week is homework all year.
 Math: Students have Lesson 53 and could choose to do lesson 54 on the back side if they wanted. Not all students were ready for this part.

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CONFERENCES: Your child is welcome and encouraged to come to conferences with you. They have worked on a presentation and written goals for themselves that they'll share.

                          1st Annual Hamilton El. Walk-a-Thon…
                                            The Hawkeye Hustle
 Information and an envelope were sent home on Thursday. We hope for this to be the only fundraiser this year.
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 MEAP PREP SITE:  MEAP PREP
Click on the purple link above to have your child practice MEAP Prep material.

 MATH:  
  Students took the test over Patterns and Coordinate Graphs on Wednesday and did very well! We have been working on fraction concepts since the beginning of the school year, but Thursday we began our first full unit, Adding and Subtracting Fractions. We have worked on adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, equivalent fractions and finding the lowest common denominator. This coming week we will begin add/subtract mixed numbers.
 
READING
   We finished Guests and students wrote about ways Moss, the main character, has changed over the course of the book which is a learning target. We completed a character study   discussing character traits and focused on character motives. We continued to discuss  literary devices such as personification,simile, and metaphors.

We watched a History.com video about the Mary Celeste, a ship whose crew disappeared in the 1800's after leaving from New York, in preparation for reading about this "mystery from history" We used clues to solve this mystery on our own and searched text evidence to examine our theories. We learned a lot of new vocabulary associated with ships! We have a boating expert in Zachary to help us along.


Next week we will begin book clubs where students will read and discuss their book together and meet with me to work on strategies and discussion as well.
  
WRITING:
 Students wrote a simile poem centered on fall. You will see these hanging in the hall when you come for conferences. We will begin reports about Indian tribes this week- something they are learning about in social studies.

SPELLING:
  Students will take the Lesson 5 Word and Skill test on Monday. The skill we practiced was ways to spell the /k/ sound.
  Monday I will send the word list for Lesson 6 home- the skill for this week is the homophones their, there, and they're.
If your child wants to play games/ practice tests, go to:
Spelling City