Hello Parents and Students,

I hope that you are all enjoying this beautiful weekend!

There's a lot going on this week so here goes.....

First, we have a field trip to WVHS Planetarium THIS Monday.  We will leave Watts at approximately 10:00 and return to Watts at around 12:00.  We will eat our lunch at normal time.

Next, Interim Assessments begin this week.  We will be testing on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week and finish up next Wednesday.

Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, will be appearing at Anderson's Bookshop on Saturday, April 26th, at 7:00pm.  He will be promoting his new book, Grandfather Gandhi, at that time.  If you'd like to pre-order the book, please ask your child to ask me for a form.  (Some students already asked for the form.)

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

Word Study/Spelling:  We are on Lesson 25 this week.  Our focus continues to be on Latin and Greek roots.  This week, we will study the root, -ject.  The words have been posted to the blog.

Math Acceleration:  We finished up our Unit 6 test last week.  This week, we will be doing some problem solving and will also begin our next unit of study, Unit 8...Rates and Ratios.  (There is no Unit 7.)

English Language Arts (ELA):  First, we will be finishing our Fortunately/Unfortunately books this week.  They are looking great!  We will continue to read Red Kayak.  We completed a review for chapters 1-7 last week.  This week, we will be completing a trifold comprehension activity that goes along with the book.  We will be having a figurative language quiz on Wednesday.  We have discussed similes, hyperboles, alliteration, metaphors, personification, oxymorons and onomatopoeia. We have written our own examples of these and also found examples of them in the text.  We will also be working on a Time For Kids magazine activity.  Busy, busy, busy!!!

Science:  We are finishing up our Space unit this week.  We will be drawing, with colored chalk, one of the types of galaxies we've been discussing in class.  We will also be viewing a couple of informative videos at Discovery Education that go along with our galaxy topic.

Social Studies:   SS is back!  We will begin at about year 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine and move through about 1838 with the Trail of Tears.  We will be comparing and contrasting Andrew Jackson and James Monroe.

It's going to be a very busy week!

If you have any questions, please email me.

Thank you!

Delissa Bennick