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.
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.
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