5B News for the Week of 1/30/2012

Hello Parents:

Open House is this Tuesday evening, January 31st.  Please stop by to visit!  Last names beginning with A-L are asked to attend from 6:30 to 7:30 and last names beginning with M-Z are asked to attend from 7:30-8:30.  This helps with overcrowding.  Hope to see you all! 

Here's a snapshot of what will be going on in 5B this week. 

I can't believe that we are already moving into February.  Where does the time go?

Reading- We will continue with our Bully lessons again this week.  This is planned for Monday.  The rest of the week we will focus on non-fiction text using skimming to preview reading materials and scanning to detect major visual patterns.  We will also be identifying text structure prior to reading.  We will make connections to real world situations or related topics before and during reading. 

Writing- It hasn't been easy, but I believe that most of us will have our "All About Me From A-Z Books" ready for viewing at Open House Tuesday evening.  We will still be working diligently on Monday and Tuesday to finish these up.  Then, we will be writing an extended response about a topic in our Time For Kids magazines.  We will also fit in some grammar during this time and our focus will be root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Flex- Our focus during flex. this week will also be on non-fiction text.  I plan to use mini-books to work on making inferences and connections to real world situations.

Math- We have completed all lessons through 6.9.  This past Friday we began working on extended response questions in preparation for the upcoming ISAT test. This will continue to be our mission through the better half of next week.  Also, I was able to find some sample questions from the IAAT (Iowa Algebra Aptitude Test), which is one of the tests used to qualify students for PA math, which all Math Accel. students will be participating in soon.  I plan to cover these sample questions during class as well.

Science- We completed a digestion experiment yesterday using whole sugar cubes and crushed sugar cubes and water.  Our goal was to find out which one (solid or crushed) would dissolve more quickly in the water.  We wrote our hypotheses and tested them.  The outcomes were unanimous.  We will continue working on digestion this week with a focus on the organs that are involved in the process.

Wishing everyone a great week!  If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me.

Thank you!

~Mrs. Bennick