FYI: No school Friday, January 23rd.


End of Semester 1: January 26th is semester end.
Your child received a new schedule on Friday.
I have copies at school as well.
  It is quite difficult to schedule 200+ students to make sure they have PE, Music, and Art, band if they chose it, and to give all students their choices.  It's possible that your child may have a class he/she didn't choose or didn't get one he/she chose.  The kids and I have talked about this and seem understanding about it. If you have questions let me know.

  Testing, Testing!
Friday students took the Dibels test.

Monday:           SRI test
Tuesday:          5th Grade Delta Math test (Covers  six 4th grade standards)
Wednesday:    Unit 3 Math Test & Book Club novel assessment
Thursday:        6th Grade Delta Math Test (Covers six 5th grade standards)

*M-Step Practice test. January 27th Mrs. Custer's Class and our class will join together to take a practice M-Step assessment. This is the assessment that students will be taking this spring- no MEAP.  This assessment is completely online so we will be having students get familiar with how it works.

Charlotte's Web:

The entire school will be watching a performance of Charlotte's web in the gym on Wednesday morning.

*Homework this weekend-  
Math- Pg 71. This is in their planners

January Book Project due January 29th.
 Students have known about this since before break and were encouraged to begin reading their books over break. We have discussed requirements a few times and they have all the information/forms needed. I asked Friday if anyone needed another copy.

Writing: Some students chose to take this home to work on if they felt they needed some extra time.

MATH:    

We have been reviewing all concepts of multiplying and dividing fractions. We have continued to focus effort on problem-solving and learning how to decide what operation is required. If division is required, they must then decide if it's dividing a fraction by a whole number or a whole number by a fraction. We've talk a lot about checking to see if the answer makes sense with the question. The test is Wednesday and then we move onto Multiplication concepts.

 

READING:
We are finally able to finish up our book club book, Long Way from Chicago. Students will have an assessment over this on Wednesday after some review. We will then work on comprehension strategies with short stories and nonfiction.

WRITING:
Students are working on a campaign speech to get others to vote for their fruit of vegetable as Fruit or Vegetable of the Year. Students have had to research nutritional information and are writing in first person as if they actually are the fruit or vegetable. They are also creating a campaign slogan and a poster. The final drafts are due next Thursday. We will present these the following week.
Students have a detailed assignment sheet, note-taking sheet, and a rubric for the project and for the presentation. I remind them to be looking at these as they are working.

SCIENCE:
We have been studying the reason we have seasons. The tilt of the Earth's axis as it revolves around the Earth and the amount of the sun's rays a given place receives are two main reasons. We have also discussed the reason there is night and day. We will be discussing the moon's phases soon. Some students from an 8th grade class will be assisting in teaching that lesson.