5B Activities for the Week of September 23rd, 2013

Hello Parents and Students:

I hope that you are all out enjoying this beautiful weekend!  There is CoGat testing this week for all 2nd and 5th grade students.  Our days for testing will be Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for one hour each day.  We will be taking three 10-minute tests per day with breaks in between.

I graded many papers this weekend!  Please check your child's take-home folder tomorrow to retrieve these.  Last week was a very productive week!

Here's what's going on in the curricular areas this week:

Spelling/Word Study:  This week our focus will be on the VC-e type of syllable.  This is Vowel Consonant and helping "e" words such as globe.  We will use the same format as last week's test in which the students will be required to learn how to spell ten of these words and then diagram five of them. The ten words will be posted on my blog and the students will each receive a copy of these words tomorrow. Most everyone did very well on last week's spelling/word study test.  It was a success!  Therefore, I will be keeping this same format.

English Language Arts (ELA):  We will be finishing up our Where I'm From poems and will be typing them in the computer lab mid-week.  We will also be learning new vocabulary from a story in our reading anthology entitled, Sees Behind Trees.  We will be doing a couple of vocabulary activities with this story and then meeting in our inquiry circles to brainstorm questions relating to this story that will help us to better understand it.  We will be taking a test on this story on Friday.  Even though we will be reading and listening to the story on audiotape during class, I would highly recommend that all students take their reading books home to reread the story a few more times.  We will also be introducing the "COOL TOOL" lessons this week which target bullying and respectful behavior.
Our read-aloud book continues to be, Because of Mr. Terupt and we will be meeting our Kindergarten Buddies for the first time this Friday!  That is always so much fun!!!

Math Accel:  We are continuing on in Unit 1 this week.  Most students performed well on the exit slip that they completed last Friday.  This week, we will continue to learn about exponents and will move on to divisors and division of whole numbers.

Social Studies:  We will be having a test on Friday on the material that we have covered in social studies on explorers and exploration.  We will be creating our own study guides on Tuesday so that the students will have time to study at home for a few nights.  I will also allow the students time to study during class either in partners or groups for better understanding.  This week we will also be finishing up the explorer timelines that we have been working on.

Science:  We will be starting science next Monday, September 30th.  Our first topic will be weather which will include studying and making weather tools and layers of the atmosphere.

That's it for now.  Please email me with any questions or concerns.  Have a great week!

~Mrs. Bennick :-)