Hello Parents and Students!

Here are the reminders for the upcoming week:

1.  There is NO SCHOOL tomorrow, Monday, November 11th.  It is Veteran's Day.

2.  For those students who qualified for the 800 Minute Book Club this month (they know who they are), please return your permission form on Tuesday so that you can eat the treat!  The celebration will take place on Tuesday. Thank you to those who have already returned the form.

3.  Thank you to all of the parents who attended Parent-Teacher Conferences last Thursday evening and Friday.  It was a pleasure meeting with all of you.  The next conference date is this Wednesday from 4:30-8:00.  I look forward to meeting the rest of you.

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

Word Study/Spelling:  It's going to be a challenging week in Word Study.  There are 15 words this week because we have a lot to review.  We will be reviewing all four types of syllables that have been introduced so far.  The students will be responsible for learning how to spell these words and also how to diagram all of them.  Remember, it's a short week.  The test will be on Friday, but we are losing Monday so the students will need to work hard and pace themselves in order to be successful.

English Language Arts:  We will continue to work on our memoirs this week.  We discussed that a memoir is just a small part or snippet of a person's life such as a special memory or time.  Most students have decided on their topic and have begun their writing.  We have one story left in our current read-aloud book.  We will begin reading the book, Wonder, this week.  We will also continue to discuss ordinary types of courage vs. extraordinary types of courage.  Writer's Workshop projects are ongoing. Most students have finished their second project.  The third project is to write a play or skit within your group and then present it.  Some groups have started on this project already and other groups will be starting this week.  We will be using Google Docs with this assignment as it makes it very convenient to work with your group members because editing and revising can take place, by each member, at the same time from their computer.  You have to love technology!!

Math Accel:  On Tuesday, some students will need additional time to finish their circle/pie graphs that they have been creating electronically.  We will then begin investigating area and perimeter.  After area and perimeter, we will take a few days to review and do some problem-solving.  The Unit 2 test will be late next week.

Social Studies:  This past week, we watched some very informative videos on each region of the colonies.  We learned that there are three regions which include the New England, the Middle and the Southern Colonies.  We took a lot of notes from these videos.  The students should be studying these notes because there will be a test coming up next Friday which covers the material from these videos.  I am also in the process of making a study guide to give to the students on Tuesday to better help them prepare for the test.  I have also created a tic-tac-toe of activities that pertain to colonial times.  The students will receive this tic-tac-toe sheet of activities on Tuesday.  They will need to complete at least three of the activities from the sheet.  However, as an additional challenge, the students may complete additional activities.

Enjoy the day off tomorrow.

See you on Tuesday!

Mrs. Bennick :-)