Students will be getting several assignments back this week; I will let you know when to look out for them- I may send them before Friday! Just a note, as I'm grading and reading through kids' work, I notice a lot of students who do not use correct capital letters and punctuation (no matter how many times I remind them!). It's an expectation that kids write in complete sentences, begin with a capital letter, and end with punctuation; a good number do this on writing assignments but may not carry this over to other subject areas. So, tomorrow kids will be given back several assignments and told to edit for punctuation and capital letters; I'll have them do this in a different color so you can see this. Just wanted you all to know! :)
Reminders:
The Fall Festival/Halloween Parade will take place this Thursday, October 31st. The parade begins at 2:00 and will be outdoors, weather permitting. In the case of inclement weather, the parade will be canceled. The parties will begin at 2:30 and end at 3:15. Students can wear their costumes to school (no masks and no weapons) as long as they are able to take part in school activities and not be too distracting. Students are able to change before the parade starts as well.
First quarter report cards will be available on HAC this Friday, November 1st at 4:00, for parents to view. Students will be bringing home an envelope with other relevant documents this day as well.
Picture retakes will take place on Tuesday, November 5th. All students who are new to Watts that started after the original picture day will have their photo taken. If you would like your child to have their photo retaken, please call the office to let them know.
This week:
5H Math: Students will finish up their division quizzes on Monday. We've also been working on an activity involving Scholastic Book Magazines. Kids are answering questions using their magazines by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimal numbers. This week we will also review rounding decimals, with a focus on the explanation. We will use number lines to help explain why a number is rounded up or down. We have touched on all of the standards for this unit, and we will spend this week "going deeper", trying to understand other methods of solving problems and better explaining our thinking. The unit 3 test will probably be the week of November 4th; just giving you a heads up, but I will update you and the kids as I see how we're doing this week.
Language Arts:
Last week while reading, we were working on making inferences based on what's written in the text. This will continue to be a focus this week: making inferences AND explaining what in the text made you come to that conclusion. We'll practice this skill through our read aloud, through poems, as well as independent reading books. I'll continue to reinforce the skills we've been working on: determining the main idea as well as supporting details, and giving a concise summary of a piece of writing.
Students have started their rough drafts of their memoirs, and I am writing right alongside them. We have been reading a memoir, to help us understand how a memoir is written. Students decided a memoir should be about something important/memorable from your life but should also be interesting (otherwise no one would want to read it!). From there, students brainstormed a list of possible things they could write about from their lives. We also learned that a memoir is based in truth, but sometimes you have to add minor details to make it interesting. For example, you may not remember exactly what your friend said to you on that important day, but you can figure out something that would make sense. We are working through the steps of the writing process together; and I will begin conferencing with students once they have a bit more of their rough drafts done.
Word Study: This Wednesday we will have a quiz on Open Syllables. As a reminder, open syllables are syllables that end in a vowel where the vowel makes the long vowel sound: e.g. pretend (pre is an open syllable, because it ends in "e" and the "e" says the long vowel sound). More information to come about our next syllable type!
Grammar: I gave the kids a pretest about the parts of speech, and most of the kids are not able to identify the parts of speech in a sentence. We started studying the parts of speech last week, by talking about and identifying nouns. We have talked about some of the different types of nouns (proper, concrete, abstract) and we will continue with nouns this week. During this time, we will also work on correctly making singular nouns plural.
Social Studies:
We're starting our second social studies unit of the year: Colonization. One of the first essential questions is "Why did early settlers come to America?". I'm going to have students take a pre-test to get an idea of where they are with the content for this unit, and then we'll go from there. We'll start with the interesting history of the city of Roanoke to get the kids interested in this period of history.
Citizenship:
We are continuing to talk about problem solving (with each other) as well as being a problem solver for yourself. When problem solving conflicts with others, we've learned that we may sometimes have to "cool off" before talking to the other person, when you're ready to talk with the other person you should start with an "I statement" instead of a "You statement" (e.g. "I'd like to do this part in the project", not "YOU are being bossy!"). This week we'll talk a bit about how to respond to each other when someone expresses a problem with you; which can be difficult!
I am also encouraging kids to problem solve their individual minor problems... instead of sitting without a pencil, ask a friend, go look in the lost in found, raise your hand, etc.
Reminders:
The Fall Festival/Halloween Parade will take place this Thursday, October 31st. The parade begins at 2:00 and will be outdoors, weather permitting. In the case of inclement weather, the parade will be canceled. The parties will begin at 2:30 and end at 3:15. Students can wear their costumes to school (no masks and no weapons) as long as they are able to take part in school activities and not be too distracting. Students are able to change before the parade starts as well.
First quarter report cards will be available on HAC this Friday, November 1st at 4:00, for parents to view. Students will be bringing home an envelope with other relevant documents this day as well.
Picture retakes will take place on Tuesday, November 5th. All students who are new to Watts that started after the original picture day will have their photo taken. If you would like your child to have their photo retaken, please call the office to let them know.
This week:
5H Math: Students will finish up their division quizzes on Monday. We've also been working on an activity involving Scholastic Book Magazines. Kids are answering questions using their magazines by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimal numbers. This week we will also review rounding decimals, with a focus on the explanation. We will use number lines to help explain why a number is rounded up or down. We have touched on all of the standards for this unit, and we will spend this week "going deeper", trying to understand other methods of solving problems and better explaining our thinking. The unit 3 test will probably be the week of November 4th; just giving you a heads up, but I will update you and the kids as I see how we're doing this week.
Language Arts:
Last week while reading, we were working on making inferences based on what's written in the text. This will continue to be a focus this week: making inferences AND explaining what in the text made you come to that conclusion. We'll practice this skill through our read aloud, through poems, as well as independent reading books. I'll continue to reinforce the skills we've been working on: determining the main idea as well as supporting details, and giving a concise summary of a piece of writing.
Students have started their rough drafts of their memoirs, and I am writing right alongside them. We have been reading a memoir, to help us understand how a memoir is written. Students decided a memoir should be about something important/memorable from your life but should also be interesting (otherwise no one would want to read it!). From there, students brainstormed a list of possible things they could write about from their lives. We also learned that a memoir is based in truth, but sometimes you have to add minor details to make it interesting. For example, you may not remember exactly what your friend said to you on that important day, but you can figure out something that would make sense. We are working through the steps of the writing process together; and I will begin conferencing with students once they have a bit more of their rough drafts done.
Word Study: This Wednesday we will have a quiz on Open Syllables. As a reminder, open syllables are syllables that end in a vowel where the vowel makes the long vowel sound: e.g. pretend (pre is an open syllable, because it ends in "e" and the "e" says the long vowel sound). More information to come about our next syllable type!
Grammar: I gave the kids a pretest about the parts of speech, and most of the kids are not able to identify the parts of speech in a sentence. We started studying the parts of speech last week, by talking about and identifying nouns. We have talked about some of the different types of nouns (proper, concrete, abstract) and we will continue with nouns this week. During this time, we will also work on correctly making singular nouns plural.
Social Studies:
We're starting our second social studies unit of the year: Colonization. One of the first essential questions is "Why did early settlers come to America?". I'm going to have students take a pre-test to get an idea of where they are with the content for this unit, and then we'll go from there. We'll start with the interesting history of the city of Roanoke to get the kids interested in this period of history.
Citizenship:
We are continuing to talk about problem solving (with each other) as well as being a problem solver for yourself. When problem solving conflicts with others, we've learned that we may sometimes have to "cool off" before talking to the other person, when you're ready to talk with the other person you should start with an "I statement" instead of a "You statement" (e.g. "I'd like to do this part in the project", not "YOU are being bossy!"). This week we'll talk a bit about how to respond to each other when someone expresses a problem with you; which can be difficult!
I am also encouraging kids to problem solve their individual minor problems... instead of sitting without a pencil, ask a friend, go look in the lost in found, raise your hand, etc.
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