5B News for the Week of 03/19/2012

Hello Parents,

This week is a short week for students.  There is no school on Tuesday, March 20th, due to a School Improvement Planning Day for teachers.  Also, on Friday, March 23rd, school will be dismissed at 12:05 for all students.  The afternoon is a teacher work day.  I wish you all a wonderful; safe spring break.  Let's hope this warm weather holds out awhile longer so that we can enjoy it over spring break. 

Here's what's going on in 5B this week:

Reading- We will dive into poetry this week in reading.  There is a list of poems that we will be analyzing.  Some of the questions that we will be discussing will include the following:  What does the title mean?  What is the purpose of the poem?  What is the target audience of the poem?  Is there a lesson/moral in the poem? What is the implied meaning of the poem?  How does the poem evoke feelings?  These are great higher-level thinking questions that should provoke a lot of deep conversations.  We will also have some mini lessons on metaphors and have the students begin writing some free verse poetry.

Flex.- We will continue our study of Aesop's Fables and discussing the lessons that the stories teach us.  We will also continue our vocabulary work by visiting the websites http://www.freerice.com/ and http://www.vocabulary.co.il/.  The students are enjoying these interactive vocabulary websites.

Writing- We started our new writing activity a few days back.  The students are creating/designing a folder of information about either the Civil War and/or the Revolutionary War.  They are including events that pertain to these topics such as slavery, Underground Railroad, important people during these times, battles, etc.  The folders will be full of information by the time they are completed.  The due date for these will be this Friday. 

Math Accel.- We just completed Unit 7 a few days ago.  The Unit 7 study guide went home last Thursday and will be due this Wednesday.  The Unit 7 test will also be on Wednesday.  On Friday, we finished lesson 8.1 and will continue to move forward in Unit 8 this week. 

Social Studies- We tested Chapter 8 this past week and have now begun studying Chapter 9 which includes the events leading up to and including the Constitution of the United States.

Have a wonderful week! 

Mrs. Bennick