Week of January 30-February 3

After a wonderful and exciting week last week, we are back to normal this week.
Lots will happen this week as we end a couple of units and get ready to move on.

5th Grade Language Arts:  Spelling - We will take the pretest Monday.  Pages and final test on Thursday this week.  **Again last week we had numerous students not complete their spelling pages.  Check Educate for the missing work.  If the students do not complete the pages and show them to me for a late grade, those grades remain a 0.

Grammar:  We are doing much better in grammar this semester than the first of the year.  Students have come a long way.  We work through 5 pages each week.  If your student is absent, they will need to complete all the pages, not just the last 2.  Make sure they check with me.
Proofreading will be assigned this week on Thursday and due on Friday.  The weekly quiz will be Friday. Proofreading is page 118, the quiz is page 119.

Literature:  We have been doing an author study on Chris Van Allsburg.  We are reading 7 of his picture books in class.  For each book there are 4 reflection questions.  We will read the last 2 books Monday and Tuesday this week.  The questions will be due on Wednesday.  All the work has been done in class, however if students do not finish the questions, they were assigned to complete them at home.  Students will need to make sure all questions are done for Wednesday.

**If your child has been absent, they will need to come in this week to read the books they missed and answer the questions!

5th Grade social studies:   We will be finishing chapter 9 this week.  This is a great chapter that gives us a good feel for life in the colonies.  This topic will carry us through the next several chapters in American history.  Last week we spent each class time visiting stations set up to resemble a part of colonial life. We have completed the stations.  All station work and the workbook questions were due on Friday.  I will be collecting workbooks this week and grading all the station work.
**Again, if your child was absent, it is up to them to complete anything they missed.
Due on Tuesday is the followup to the stations.  At the end of last week I gave them the format for writing a letter about their experience visiting Colonial Williamsburg.  We spent Wednesday completing the graphic organizer for the letter(on Google classroom).  Thursday they had time to work on the letter in class.  The letter includes a sketch of one location.  They were given the paper to complete this as well.
The final copy of the letter and the sketch are due on Tuesday.  All students should have someone at home look over their letter for mistakes, and make sure it follows the directions.  Please check with your child on this assignment.

Monday and Tuesday we are working on a computer program where each student will create a Colonial profile and post things about their life.  It is a good summary of all the pieces they read about.
**The chapter test will be on Friday.  We will begin preparing for it on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Look for the study guide to come home as homework.

6th Grade Literature:  We continue to work through our textbook on short stories that are biographies or historical fiction.  Last week we spent time in "Expert Groups".  Students read one story and taught it to another in order to answer the questions.  That assignment will be graded this week.  We also read "The Red Guards" and are completing a timeline for that story.  
This week's short story is one of my favorites.  It is "The Dog of Pompeii" and is historical fiction about the eruption of Mr. Vesuvius.  We will do a number of activities with this story.

I am checking in with this week with each student about their book they are reading.  Whenever they have completed the book they chose for the book report, they can begin the report.  They will need to make sure they have another book to read as well.  We are following the Readers Workshop format in class, and so students receive about 20 minutes to read independently each class, in addition to our class reading.

We will begin reading our class novel Number the Stars    next week!  We will read most of it as a read aloud in class, but there will be some home assignments.

5th and 6th Grade:  Do not forget the Book Report is due February 27/28(6th).  Directions for all of the report choices are posted on this blog under Literature and on Google Classroom.  Follow the directions exactly for the report style you choose!

Have a blessed week in the Lord,
Mrs. Brown