Week of October 19- October 23, 2015

Hello Families and Friends,

We had a magical and truly great experience on the water today on the O'Neill Sea Odyssey trip! Thank you to all those who drove and chaperoned. There was a lot to see and a great deal to learn about marine biology, ecology, and navigation. The water was calm and the day perfect for a sail. As homework tonight your child should get online and walk you through what they learned. Go to www.oneillseaodyssey.org. Select "Educators" on the top of the page and scroll down to the bottom of the orange drop menu. Select "View your Class Data." This will take you to the page where you can select the group your child was in--Great White Shark or Harbor Porpoise under Mountain School at the top of the page. Enjoy looking this over together. In addition, your child also took home a folder with a picture of them on the boat at the helm! 

Special Announcement: there is no school on Friday Oct. 23!

Head Phones: We had a special delivery today from Amazon courtesy of Julie Thornton (Tom's mom)! Julie donated new head phones to our classroom for our computers. Wow! We used them today in the afternoon, and they were terrific. Thank you, Julie, you rock!

Report cards and parent conferences are coming up quickly--November 4-10. Please click on the SignUpGenius link below as soon as you are able so that you can get a slot that works for your schedule. Thank you to those who have signed up thus far. The emails come straight into my in box, and I can see that it is working just fine. 

SignUpGenius

I will be conducting assessments over the next few weeks as we wind down the first trimester. Making sure your child is on time, well rested and fed is especially important.

ELA: We will continue with our literature circle book--The Birchbark House. 

Read Aloud: We are finished Kit Carson today and will be writing a book review on it. Tomorrow we'll be starting Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech! 

Math: We took our factors and multiples pretest on Friday. Monday we had our official test on this material.  It is important for students to continue to review the divisibility rules which will help with division by a single digit. We will move into multi-digit multiplication and division in the coming weeks.  Math facts should be practiced each night for 5 minutes. Please check your child's planner for specific math practice assignments. 

Science: Now that Mrs. Dudley is back from Science Camp, 5th graders will continue with her, and the 4th will turn back to their study of magnets and circuits in the Foss Science Program. 

Social Studies: We are researching our tribes for our narrative essays about Native Americans. Your child has homework to research his/her tribe this week. This could include a home library book or a bit of supervised web browsing on a particular tribe. They are welcome to bring in any information that they would like to share as they collect it. We will do this in class as well. 

Writing and Grammar: We are reviewing transitions and will work on learning the process of organizing our ideas for our narratives.

Have a great week!

Warmly,

Mrs. Young