October+Newsletter

Reading/ELA Before fall break, all students will be using "The Ransom of Red Chief" as a lens to view to examine literary elements. Blue classes will have a test over the parts of speech Thursday, Oct. 3.

Students will be using their research on the biomes to write an informative essay about one of the biomes they researched and how humans have interfered with or impacted that biome. This essay will be done in class and is due Oct. 24. Then, using their essay as a basis of information, students will revise part of their presentation on biomes they did in Science to represent one biome to our ELA class. Our goal is to teach students to present in a way that is more interesting. Included is a copy of the requirements.

Social Studies Students finished their unit on the geography and history of Africa and took a test on Tuesday, Oct. 1. Students were given a study guide on Friday, Sept. 27 and spent Monday in class completing the study guide based on their notes, their peers, and the projects they had worked on the previous week. We are starting to go over the types of government and will begin covering that before fall break and will talk more about those when we come back from Fall Break. We will be looking specifically at the government systems in a few countries in Africa before finishing up the continent of Africa. Students will have a test over the government of Africa Thursday, Oct. 31. We will move onto the Middle East beginning in November. Novemeber 4-8 Math  Each Wednesday Math classes will work in the computer lab on Khan academy. If you are not familiar with this website it is a great tool to use at home with your child. Every students should have their login information recorded in the front of their agenda. This computer based program is excellent for highlighting and targeting math skills your child needs to work on. I also love taht there is a short video to teach children how to do each skill (this is also great for parents that are a little rusty at their math skills).

Wow! what a week we have planned. This week students will continue working on finding missing angle measurements. Encourage your child to review their vocabulary each night. Students will also look at creating and interpreting stem and leaf plots and box and whisker plots. Ask your child to show you how to create these graphs. Students have a math assessment on Tuesday. We will review for this assessment on Monday. On Thursday, we will work with ratios and the sample space of probability (lesson 36). Finally on Friday, we will work on finding the area and perimeter of rectangles and triangles (lesson 37).

Science

This week in Science kids will be investigating cells, cell parts, and their functions. We will view videos, watch Powerpoints, and create flip books.