January 26-30

We actually have a full week of school! Hopefully we'll have a productive week! 

Reminders:

Wednesday is Open House 6:30-7:30! We hope to see you all there; we'll be working on things early this week to show you!

One Book One School starts this week! Your child will be coming home with a book Monday. We hope you enjoy this opportunity to read a book with your child. Please help your child keep up with the book, by reading each week night. 

Please return the Robert Crown permission slip as soon as possible. 

Hill Middle School forms are due by Friday!! They will be picked up then, so it's important to get them in by Friday. 

5H Math: 

This week we'll be finishing up our geometry unit with a couple quizzes. We won't have an end of the unit test. Monday kids have their volume quiz, and Wednesday we'll have the last quiz which will require kids to know the different types of triangles as well as the attributes of the other polygons we've studied. For example, kids will need to know all the names a square can have, as well as which shapes are parallelograms and why. 

Language Arts:

This week we will read two poems about courage as we finish up our courage unit. We will think back about the theme of courage and how it was represented in the different texts we read before kids will get a chance to write a poem of their own as well. We still have a couple chapters left in Gabriel King as well, so we will get this finished up. 

Word Study:

We will practice working with words that have the consonant- Le syllable type. We will compare words with this syllable type to words that end in -el, to try and figure out when to use "le" and when to use "el". Kids will have a quiz on Friday over some of the words we'll be working with in the classroom. 

Social Studies/Science:

We will be working on different colony projects this week, to hopefully have ready for you at Open House. Kids have learned about different countries that settled in North America and why they came, and most recently the 13 English colonies (struggles, daily life, resources, etc.). By the end of the week, we'll need to switch to science, which will begin our Digestive Unit.  

January 20-23

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day! This week we’ll talk a bit about Dr. King, his accomplishments, as well as how he ties in with our theme of courage. We will learn more about Dr. King later in the year when we’re learning about the civil rights movement.

This week:

-report cards can be accessed on HAC Thursday at 4:00

-Remember to have your child turn in their Hill Middle School form by January 30^th

-The Robert Crown permission slip also needs to be returned at your earliest convenience

-5H will also be having a pizza “party” this Friday with cheese pizza from Papa Johns, provided by the school. A form is coming home Tuesday and will need to be returned by Friday.

-Open House is coming up! Next week! January 28^th 6:30-7:30. We hope you can make it, we’ll be working on some special things for you!

-Have any extra quarters laying around? The service club is holding a “quarter drive” for a service project called “Race to 1,000 meals” for Feed My Starving Children. Just 22 cents can pay for a meal for a starving child. This fundraiser runs until February 4th when the service club will be donating their time to pack food and the funds donated by the school.

5H Math:

This week we will review how to find area of a rectangle as well as how to find volume of rectangular prisms. We will end the week by learning about the different types of triangles- we did not get to this last week.

Language Arts:

We’ll wrap up the performance task this week. Kids should have their opinion papers done, although we will take some time to revise and edit. Then kids will work with a partner to compare the people they researched and create a short presentation to share their comparison. Kids will present Friday.

This week we’ll also finish our anchor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King. I’ll have kids bring home their reading notebooks Wednesday this week, so you can see the work we’ve been doing with the text.

Word study- we’re starting a new syllable type this week: Consonant- le (examples: stable, portable) Kids will learn these types of syllables are typically at the end of words. We’ll be working with these words this week, separating them into syllables and more importantly understanding their meanings.

Social Studies:

We are focusing on the 13 colonies this week. Kids will be learning what types of jobs people had in the colonies and why…how did the geography or the resources affect the types of jobs people had? In addition to reading, we will watch parts of Colonial House a PBS show to better understand what colonial life was really like. 

January 12-15

Hopefully we'll be sort of back to normal this week! Although the kids do have school off this Friday (1/16) as well as next Monday (1/19) for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

• We are taking our CBMs Monday. 
• Important: Kids got a packet about middle school class options on Friday. Once you and your child have chosen their option, please have them bring back the sheet that has their name and choice on it as well as your signature.  
• More graded papers coming home tomorrow. 

5H Math: This week the kids will complete a Quadrilateral "Family Tree" to see how the shapes are related based on their attributes. Our geometry vocab quiz is Tuesday- kids have their packet to help them study. Toward the end of the week, the kids will take an end of the quarter assessment; it is not for a grade but allows me to see their retention of skills and progress. 

Language Arts: 

Much of what was written from last week applies to this week as well. Kids will continue to have time each day for their performance task, and we continue to read The Liberation of Gabriel King. I brought kids' reading notebooks home this weekend to read and grade some of their responses to questions about this text- kids are doing well! This week kids will write a short opinion piece about one of the characters from the text. Kids will practice stating their opinion, including multiple pieces of support as well as explaining their support. 

Our word study quiz on the sounds of "c" and "g" is this Tuesday. 

Social Studies:

This week kids will be reading from their social studies texts a good deal. The text supports this unit well. Kids will learn about the countries that came to North America (Spain, France, the Netherlands, England) and where they settled. Then kids will read about what made people from these countries come to "the New World" to settle. We will read about the Pilgrims and the Puritans. 

The essential questions we'll focus on this week are: 

Which European nations claimed territory in North America?

Why did early settlers come to North America?

January 5-9

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays! Thank you so much to those families that donated to the class gift card; I'm not sure who all donated, but your generosity was very kind, and of course thank you to others that gave thoughtful gifts. I appreciate you all! 

We're coming back to a couple busy weeks before the end of the quarter. This week we have our second round of CBMs. On Thursday kids will take their math CBMs in the morning, and then Friday morning students will participate in the reading CBM. 

Also, this Friday Hill Middle School Principal, Mr. Dutdut, as well as some other staff members will be coming to May Watts to start sharing middle school class information with students. I believe kids will come home with a packet for you to look over on this day as well. 

A note from the office...if your child forgets their lunch or you to decide to drop off their lunch, there are new bins right outside the office door labeled by grade level for you to place their lunch in. Lunch supervisors will make sure kids get their lunches. This will cut down on classroom interruptions. Please let me know, or the office, if you have any questions. 

Some graded papers will come home tomorrow. 

5H Math: We continue our geometry unit this week. Before break kids were working on geometry books. These will need to be finished up Monday for homework, if they aren't already. I will also hand back students pretests for them to bring home, so you can see how much prior knowledge they had on the topics. Of most concern would be if students did not know the names of the basic polygons. Please look over this with your child. 

This week we will look at the similarities between polygons as well as learn the different types of triangles. Triangles can be named by their angle measures (acute, right, obtuse) or their side lengths (equilateral, scalene, and isosceles). Students will learn that some polygons can have multiple names...a square is a polygon, quadrilateral, parallelogram, rectangle and a rhombus.  

Language Arts: 

This week and next we will try and complete the second quarter performance task, to which there are many steps. I have written a direction sheet for kids that will help them complete the steps of the task. The task is supposed to be done independently as much as possible. I have been referring to the task in the last couple weeks. The students need to choose a person that they believe has shown courage, research this person and then write an opinion paper explaining why they believe this person was courageous. They will also need to compare their chosen person to a character from one of the books we've read. We will have time each day to complete this task. Students need to have their person picked by Tuesday morning. So some of them may need to do more researching Monday night for homework to figure out their person. 

We continue to read Liberation of Gabriel King every day and discuss and respond in writing to questions about the text. We will also continue DOL to improve our grammar and conventions in writing. 

I hope to start another book this week, Fort Mose and The Story of the Man Who Built the First Black Settlement in Colonial America, which will tie in with our social studies unit. I am not sure we will get to it, but it is very interesting. Here's a link to an article if you want to read about it: 

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/26/us/traces-of-free-blacks-in-florida-uncovered-in-a-colonial-fort.html 

Word Study
This week we will study the different sounds the letter c and the letter g make. Kids will have words to work with throughout the week that are good examples. They will have a quiz Friday in which they will need to spell the words correctly, but they will not have to mark the syllables of these words. 

Social Studies
This week we will read about the different European countries that set up colonies in North America. We start by learning about New Spain, and will then learn about the English attempts at colonization including Roanoke (the lost colony) and Jamestown.