Newsletter- 12/2

Happy December!

I would like to start off by saying a HUGE THANK YOU to all who contributed to the Tuesday celebration before Thanksgiving. Also, thank you to those who were able to attend the class readings of their opinion pieces.  I know that the students greatly appreciated you attending and I was most appreciative of you coming to support and celebrate all their hard work. **I will post some of the students' work on the blog soon**

This week in ELA we are starting on poetry in the new guided reading groups.  Today they heard some wonderful poetry from Charles R. Smith.  I was fortunate enough to meet him and sit in on his lecture on poetry.  The class really seemed to enjoy the cool readings from his CD.  Attached is a poem they heard today twice called “I Am a Poet”.  His creative writings show the students that poetry can come in many forms. As a group they found two poems they liked from other poets, presented them and explained why.  This week they will experiment with poetry and find their personal style of poetry writing.

In social studies we are in the finishing Chapter 2: "Native Americans".  We are focusing on Lesson 4 today and tomorrow about “The Southwest and the West” tribes.  As groups, students are making a documentary presentation where they interview a tribe member from a southwest or western tribe.  By Wednesday we will by finishing the chapter with Lesson 5 “The Northwest and the Arctic”.  Thursday and Friday will be chapter review days.  I am trying to teach the students how to study and techniques they can use.  As you may know I had them create study guides in their notebooks over vacation identifying the lesson vocabulary and summarizing the information from the lesson headings.  I am going to send home more study guide sheets to help prepare the students for the Chapter Test on Monday, 12/9.  That gives them a full week to study for the test.  I will also be providing a Jeopardy Review Day for them Thursday and Friday.  They should bring home the text on Thursday to study and they can keep it home until Monday.

In math we are in the middle of Chapter 2: Divide whole numbers.  This week the students are working on “Estimate with 2 Digit Divisors” and “Divide by 2-Digit Divisors”. They will have in class worksheet quizzes for these lessons on Wednesday and Friday.  There are worksheets for review called reteach and the answers attached to this paper.

Finally, we are working their second list of Words Their Way spelling list for the quarter.  Monday through Wednesday they are to work on their three choices of spelling homework.  Thursday, they are to study their words for the spelling test on Friday.

REMINDER: THIS Friday 12/6 is a half day