March 16-20

No special events in the classroom this week, although we will hopefully have our "marble party" later in the week. The kids wanted some time to play outside, which makes sense, and ice cream. So, this means you'll have a permission slip coming your way sometime this week. I just have to get the permission slip approved by the office, first! 

I passed back a few papers last week (science quiz, vocabulary sheet, and converting sheet) and will let you know when you can expect to see more this week. 

5H Math: 

Kids take their converting quiz on Monday- see email. Then the rest of the week we will be practicing measuring and converting within the customary units. We will again work with distance, volume/capacity and weight.

Language Arts/Social Studies:

The next couple weeks, language arts and social studies will be very much intertwined. Our theme, "At a Crossroads", fits perfectly with our social studies unit of the American Revolution...when the colonies were at a crossroads. As we learn about the events and people that lead to the American Revolution we'll also be discussing how decisions were made and the consequences of these decisions. 

We started watching "America the Story of Us" last week, and we will also be reading from our social studies textbooks to go deeper with the events and people shown in the video. For example, this week we will read more about the taxes Great Britain imposed on the colonists and why. We will also learn more about Patrick Henry and read and hear some of his famous speech that included the line "give me liberty or give me death!" We will also review The Boston Tea Party, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and the beginning of the war in Lexington and Concord. 

We will also use the text "George vs. George" this week which presents both sides of the American Revolution. I will pair passages from this text with passages about similar topics from their social studies books so we can compare and contrast the information. 

Each day we will be reading about and discussing events that lead to the war. It would be great to ask your child each day what we discussed, to help them review.

We will continue to read "Red Kayak" during language arts as well. 

Word Study:

This week we'll study the suffixes "al" (like in the word "global") and "ity" (like in the word "security"). Kids will learn the meanings of the suffixes and words, how to change the spelling of a word to add the suffix, and a few homophones this week. Kids will have a short homework assignment Monday night for the homophones. 

Citizenship this week is about personal responsibility in school. Last week we focused on following directions the first time, and the kids did well. They earned all their marbles in every specials class last week :)!