Week in a Peek for September 27th - October 1st

I can't believe October is here.  Hopefully the weather has changed for good and the humidity has passed!  This week has been a busy one!   NECAP begins this week and it is very important that all students get a good nights sleep (at least 8 hours), eat a good breakfast, and be at school on time.  We will begin the NECAP around 9:30.  The only homework I will assign during these next 2 weeks will be a reading log and a math log.  There will be no spelling words this week or next.

Reading:

The students are continuing to work on making connections and inferences.  We have also been working on supporting our answers with information from the text and recycling the questions to help form complete sentences.We also worked on some NECAP prep items throughout the week.

Writing:
Students are continuing their Animal essays.  They are doing a great job adding details to their paragraphs.  We need to work on self editing our pieces.  We will continue editing our DLP's daily and adding to our editing notebooks.  The focus for the last 2 weeks was adding the suffix -able to words.

Math:

This week we will finish up with Unit 1 - Geometry.  The students have been working on lines of symmetry,  congruency,  and flips, slides and turns.  I have included a few web sites on my math page that will help with these topics.

Science:

We began our Mock Rock investigation this week.  The focus of this investigation is to identify what rocks are made of.  We broke apart our Mock Rocks and found 4 different types of materials, red gravel, green gravel, shells, and gray matter.  We've determined that the red and green gravel, and the shells can not be broken down any further and are there for considered minerals.  We have yet to determine if we can break down the gray matter any further and have decided to try to dissolve the gray matter in water to see what happens.  Next week we will set up evaporation disks to see what is left in our solution.  The students enjoyed being geologists and even though our dry mock rocks became quite moist with all the humidity this week, the students had a good time using their geologist picks to break apart their rocks.

Social Studies:

We will have our first test on Monday October 4th.  The test will consist of the continents, oceans, equator, and prime meridian.  The students will fill in a map listing all these things.

Breakfast Club:

The first Breakfast Club will take place on Thursday October 7th.  I will provide muffins, cereal, and juice to those students who have brought in ALL their homework for the month of September.  Students will receive their breakfast treat when they come into the classroom on Thursday.  October is another month so let's try to add to our Breakfast Club!!  Look for invitations to come home on Tuesday! 

Reminders:

• NECAP is this week.  Please make sure to get plenty of rest, eat a good breakfast and to arrive at school on time!
• Breakfast Club will be held on Thursday October 7th.
• Picture Re-take day is on Tuesday October 5th. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend and hopefully fall is here to stay!!!