Sunday, April 24, 2016

Week of April 25-29th

We had a wonderful day on Friday.  It was great to welcome so many Grandparents and special friends.  The kids loved having guests for the day.  I hope it was a wonderful memory for your family.
We have a few weeks left of normal schedule, before the last few weeks of craziness set in. We have a lot to do in this time and so once again, encourage your student to continue working hard and keep up with all their assignments.

5th grade Language Arts:  Spelling - normal schedule this week.  We will be working on pages 180-183.  We will have a pretest Monday and final test and pages on Thursday.
Grammar - also will follow a normal schedule with skill pages Tuesday and Wednesday and a proofreading assignment on Thursday, quiz on Friday.

Literature:  We have begun reading our final novels.  Students are in groups of about 5-6 to read 4 different novels.  They should be reading their chapters outside of class.  They are doing journals, vocabulary and this week quiz questions on the chapters in class.  Keep checking Cornerstone to see if they missed any assignments.
There will be both a group project and an individual project to go with each book.

5th grade social studies:  We  are working on chapter 14, the writing of the Constitution.  Students were assigned vocabulary words on Thursday that are due Monday.  We will be reviewing tomorrow and then  playing a Constitution game on Tuesday.  We will take the Chapter 14 test on Wednesday, April 27.
It is not open note/book, students will need to study.
Chapter 15 is on The Bill of Rights and we will work in groups to study the Bill of Rights and find present day situations that still relate back to those amendments.

6th Grade Literature:  We have divided into small groups, to read our last novels.  We have 5-6 novels being read in each class.  Students should do most of the reading outside of class.  They are completing journals, vocabulary, discussions and this week quiz questions in class.  There will be a final test and project for each book.

I have hung our Holocaust projects in the hallway.  We had a few wonderful video productions as well.  I will be deciding this week which projects will go to the Holocaust Museum for competition.  I will take some pictures this week of the wall and post them on Twitter.  Come see and read them if you can.
We will be travelling to the Saul Mirowitz Jewish School on Thursday, May 5th to end our Holocaust study and share what we have learned with students from this school.  We did this last year and it was a wonderful experience.  I will send a separate email this week with the details.  We will be able to take several parents along that would like to attend.

Remember there is no formal 4th quarter book report, but each 5th and 6th grade student needs to give at least one book talk for points.  They may give more for extra points.

Have a very blessed week!
Mrs. Brown

Monday, April 18, 2016

Week of April 18-22


WE made it through testing week!!  Overall the students did very well.  They worked hard on the tests and did their best.  We are grateful that it was nice outside and we were able to go out for fresh air in the afternoons.

This week we are back to our normal schedule and classes.  Just a reminder we are already at the half way point in fourth quarter and those last weeks go very quickly.  Make sure your child is up on all their work.  Those with missing work will be pulled from extra activities to complete what was due.

5th grade Language Arts:  Spelling this week is pages 174-177.  Pretest is Monday, pages and final test are Thursday.
Grammar pages are 173-177.  We have struggled a little bit with adverbs.  This week we will deal with double negatives.  There will be an assignment on Thursday that is due Friday.

Literature: Students are in groups by the novel that they are reading.  They will receive a calendar of assigned chapters and homework on Monday.  It will be both in printed form and shared on Google.  They should be reading the book at home.  You may read it with them.  Again, because of the timing, students that fall behind and do not complete their work, will be pulled from the group to work alone.

Social Studies:  We have 3 chapters left that we need to cover before our trip to Springfield in May.  The first two are on the Constitution, U.S. Government and the Bill of Rights.  They are very important, but we will move through them rather quickly.  There will be a chapter test on both of them.  One will be next week probably Wednesday.

6th Grade Literature:  We are finishing up our mythology unit.  Students this week will be assigned a partner project.  We will review for the unit test and take the test on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.  Students will receive a study guide to help them prepare.

We will then move into our final novel.  We are offering 6 novel choices.  Students will be assigned to one book to read along with a small group.  Pages will be assigned to read outside of class, so that the journals, quizzes, discussions and vocabulary can be done in class.
They will receive their books and assigned pages Wednesday/Thursday this week.

*Students must read the pages and be able to complete the assigned work.  If they fall behind, they may be removed from their group to work independently.

I am looking forward to receiving the Holocaust projects this week.  I will be submitting some to the Holocaust museum and some will travel with us on May 5th.

Miss Sell is doing a wonderful job working with the classes.  By next week she will be taking over most of the classroom teaching.  We work together on all the lessons she presents. She has brought some great new ideas to the units we have done.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Testing Week



Welcome to testing week.  We will still have classes this week, just not on our regular schedule and most will be modified.

Please check what is due for the week!!
We will also use this week to make up late and missing work.  Make sure to check Cornerstone throughout this week for work that is late or missing.  Assignments such as practice tests or study guides that are assigned for a completion grade cannot be made up.  Students know this ahead of time.


5th grade Language Arts:  We will not do Spelling or Grammar this week!

Literature:  Partners are finishing writing a fractured fairy tale. We will be sharing those in class this week.  We may also begin work on our final writing project of writing an original fairy tale.

We will be looking at our final Literature set of novels.  We have 4 novels to choose from that students will read.  We will look at all 4 books and by the end of the week, students will be placed in a literature group and assigned to one of the books.
This final book will follow the format we have used all year for novels.  Students will read chapters at home and complete quizzes, journals, vocabulary words and discussions for points.

5th grade Social Studies: We had a great lesson last week where each student looked at 6 different objects from the 1770's.  They filled out observation forms on each object and then made an educated guess who the items belonged to and what the items were used for. As long as they made good observations and filled out the final question, they received full points.  Grades are posted.
  We will continue to watch some Liberty Kids videos this week on the Revolutionary War and read one more section in our books.  On Friday students will receive the chapter 13 test as a take home test that will be due on Monday.


6th Grade Literature:
Holocaust Reflection Projects:  Last week Monday I assigned the students to a final individual reflection project for our Holocaust unit.  Each student is to turn in a written, art or video reflection of the things we studied and read in this unit.  The directions are posted on Google Classroom.
The project is due next Monday, April 18th.  Some of the projects will be sent into a competition sponsored by the Holocaust Museum in St. Louis, others will travel with us to The Morowitz Jewish School on our field trip May 5th (details to come).

We are working on myths. The classes have a myth assignment due this week.  We will be doing a myth comparison Monday and Tuesday in class using the Disney version of Hercules and an original written version.  It will be due the following class time.

Students will be choosing their final book of  the year to read at the beginning of next week.  They will read one last novel.  Chapters should be read at home and journals, discussion, quizzes and vocabulary will be completed at school.
**Students not keeping up with their assignments will be pulled from their group and work by themselves.


Encourage your child this week!  Tell them how smart they are and that they can and will do an awesome job on the testing.  Get plenty of sleep and eat well!!
Have a blessed week,
Mrs. Brown