Week of October 26- October 30, 2015

Dear Families and Friends,

Special Announcements: Halloween is being celebrated at school this Friday morning with the annual Halloween parade. Your child can come to school in his/her costume in the morning. We will have the parade first thing in the morning as usual and then resume our Friday schedule with P.E. at 9:20. Please be sure your child has regular/comfortable clothes and tennis shoes to change into for the rest of the day. 

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

Report cards and parent conferences are coming up quickly--November 4-10. If you haven't done so, 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

**Please remember, your child is to come with you to the parent conference so that they can be directly involved in their progress thus far. 

I will be conducting the remaining assessments in math (Thursday) and writing (Mon., Tues., Wed.). Please Make sure your child is on time, well rested and fed. 

ELA: We will continue with our literature circle book--The Birchbark House as time allows around assessments.

Read Aloud: We have finished Kit Carson and will be writing a book review on it.  Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech in our next novel! 

Math: Math facts should be practiced each night for 5 minutes. Please check your child's planner for specific math practice assignments. We are reviewing concepts in place value, rounding. estimating, factors and multiples in preparation for our math assessment Thursday.

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 prepositions, types of sentences, similes, and simple, compound and complex sentences in preparation for our writing assessment.

Have a great week!

Warmly,

Mrs. Young