Week of January 19-22

Last week was a great week, full of interesting events and information.  This week will be a continuation of those topics.
By now, all 5th and 6th graders should have a book picked out and checked in to read for the upcoming book report.  Any students that have not chosen yet, will be assigned a book this week.
I have encouraged the students to look at the number of days to read the book and the number of chapters or pages in their book, and set a goal to read a certain amount each day or couple of days.  Check in with your student from time to time and see how the book is progressing.  You may, as always read the book with them.

5th Grade Language Arts:  This is a short week so we will squeeze Grammar and spelling into 4 days.  Spelling pages 110-113 with the pretest on Tuesday.  Pages will be due on Friday along with the test instead of Thursday this week.  Many students took their book home to get a head start this weekend.
Grammar is a continuation of pronouns with a review of abbreviations.  There will be a chromebook assignment on Thursday, due Friday.
Literature:  We have finished reading 8 Chris Van Allsburg stories.  This week each student will be assigned to one of the stories, and create a presentation about the story, including theme, setting, characters and author information.  We watched part of Zathura last week and enjoyed comparing it to the story.
At the end of the week we will read Weslandia from our Treasures book.  It is another great fantasy story.  Look for a special project to come home next weekend for this story.

5th grade social studies:  We have one day left of Colonial stations.  Each student has had a chance to experience school, church, a tavern with games, the shoemakers, the Governors palace and slave quarters, read about them and complete an activity similar to colonial times.  It has gone well, and the students have enjoyed the variety of activities, especially the games and writing with a real quill pen and ink,
After finishing stations Tuesday, we will watch some colonial videos from Colonial Williamsburg about life then, work on a study guide and take the chapter test on Friday.
We will continue next week with Colonial life, creating colonial profiles for each student and interacting with each other.

6th grade Literature:  We have just finished reading "The Red Guards" a memoir about living in China during the Cultural Revolution.  We did some minor research about the time and topic to understand the story.  Students will create a timeline for this story this week.  We will then move on to a great historical fiction story called "The Dog of Pompeii." We will take some time to investigate the ancient ruins of Pompeii and even discuss history through music.
We are working on writing Personal Narratives as well and the rough draft will be due this week.

Have a Blessed week!