UPCOMING DATES:

 Tuesday, October 8............ MEAP Reading Testing
 Wednesday, October 9........MEAP Reading Testing

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 a coordinate graph review page- both sides.

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Me with my AWESOME  group of kids!! -Minus 2 that insisted on taking the picture!

                          1st Annual Hamilton El. Walk-a-Thon…
                                            The Hawkeye Hustle
The Hamilton El. PTO is happy to announce an all-new fundraising event…a school-wide Walk-a-Thon! This event, called The Hawkeye Hustle, will take place on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 during the school day and all Hamilton El. students will have the opportunity to come out and walk around the track for a specified period of time. This will be a great way for kids to have fun, be active and raise money for our school at the same time! Since this will replace the fundraiser that we usually participate in through The Goodies Factory, we are hoping that it will be a huge success so we do not have to do another fundraiser later in the year! At this time, the PTO is looking for local businesses that may be willing to help sponsor this event. If you know of anyone who may be interested, please have them contact Ronda Hulst at 616-218-3542 or at rondahulst@gmail.com for further details. Our goal is for every Hamilton El. student to receive a walk-a-thon t-shirt! More details on the walk-a-thon, along with other ways you can help, will be coming home soon, so please watch for it!
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 MEAP PREP SITE:  MEAP PREP
Click on the purple link above to have your child practice MEAP Prep material.

 MATH:  
 We began our unit on Patterns and Coordinate Graphs. Students are looking at data tables and determining patterns as well as graphing the information as coordinates on a graph. The kids are having fun with the coordinate graphing pictures they have been doing for additional practice. We will take the test for this unit on Wednesday this week.

 
READING
  During Read Aloud the past 2 weeks, we have been reading Guests which is the focal book in our first genre unit series. During this time we work on comprehension strategies through discussions. We also have been doing a character study and discussing character traits, working on literary devices such as personification, and doing vocabulary work. 

We read nonfiction articles this week and focused on cause and effect. We discussed how cause/effect relationships are part of our everyday lives. We also watched a video about similes, metaphors, and personification set to the song "Firework" which contains several of those literary devices as does our read aloud book, Guests.

How can you help at home? Reading daily builds fluency and comprehension. A 5th grade level goal is to read 130 words per minute by the end of the year.
  
WRITING:
 We have had some Author's Chair time for sharing what kids have written. We will finish this week. We also wrote simile poems to practice this concept.

SPELLING:
  Students will take the Lesson 4 Word and Skill test on Monday. The skill we practiced was silent letters. 
  Monday I will send the word list for Lesson 5 home- the skill for this week is various spellings of the /k/ sound.
If your child wants to play games/ practice tests, go to:
Spelling City