Newsletter: Week of August 30

Reading: The story we will be focusing on this week is entitled "The Hot and Cold Summer".  This story is about two boys, Rory and Derek, who refuse to speak with Bolivia who is new.  When Bolivia's pet escapes, the boys realize that Bolivia may be interesting after all.  While reading the story, we will focus on using predictions to help us understand/comprehend the story.  After reading the story, the students will work on making connections.  There are three ways they can make connections: text to self, text to text, and text to world.  The students will also work on defining and using new vocabulary words.  The vocabulary words for this week are commotion, authority, exhausted, incredible, vow, and souvenir.

Math: In math we started learning about arrays.  This week we will continue to work on arrays and factors.  The students will learn about divisibilty rules and how to use them.  They will also learn about prime and composite numbers.  Prime numbers have exactly 2 factors and composite numbers have more than two numbers.  The number 1 is not prime or composite.  Throughout this week, they will also play the game factor captor to reinforce the lesson on factors. 

Writing: There will be a variety of activities for this week.  We will review the writing process and talk about why writing is so important.  For the next two weeks, we will be working on "storying" which helps students come up with ideas.  There will also be a timed writing prompt given this week to get baseline data on the students.  This will help me see where all the students are at with their writing.

Science:  Last week we started to learn about the layers of the atmosphere.  This week the students will make a diagram of these layers and take a quiz over them.  The students will also learn about the wind vane and the anemometer.  The wind vane shows the direction the wind is blowing and the anemometer shows the speed of the wind.  The students will also learn about air, the states of matter, and how air occupies space.

Social Studies:  We will go into social studies when we finish the weather unit.

Spelling:  There will be a pretest on Thursday of this week.  The words for the week will be posted after the pretest.

Important Dates:

• Band/Orchestra Parent Night: Tuesday, August 31
• Curriculum Night: Wednesday, September 1 - First Session 7:05 - 7:35, Math Session 7:40-7:50, Second Session 7:55-8:25  
• Science quiz over the layers of the atmosphere: Thursday, September 2
• No School Monday, September 6: Labor Day
• No School Tuesday, September 7: Building Articulation Day