Thank you to all of the parents who made it out to the Fall Carnival and volunteered your time to help raise money for Huggins!  If I didn't see you and thank you personally on Saturday, please accept my gratitude for all you do for our school and students.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with every single one of you in our parent conferences over the last couple of weeks to talk about your scholar's successes and progress.  It was nice to put faces to names and to share what has been going on.

This week's happenings:

Math: We are still working very hard on fractions in math.  We have talked about proper and improper fractions, mixed numbers, equivalent fractions, comparing fractions, the GCF (greatest common factor) and LCM/LCD (least common multiple/least common denominator).  We will continue to work on these skills over the next week and move into adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators and ordering and comparing mixed numbers.  I have loaded assignments into Study Island (www.studyisland.com) and to access this site, your scholar needs their username (first initial, last name @huggins ex: tmefford@huggins and their password is their ID number.  They are to be working on this site as much as possible to reinforce skills at home.  We will have a Spiral Review on Thursday to check their progress on fractions.

Science: We have talked about sedimentary rock layers to study our Earth's past, nonrenewable resources and fossils fuels and weathering and erosion.  Next week we will talk about caves and renewable energy.  The students will have an at-home mini-project on alternative energy that we will discuss on Thursday.  It will be due on Monday with presentations.  They also have a major 9 weeks project that will be due on Dec. 13th.

Social Studies: We are still talking about the Constitution and Early America.  We are currently finishing up Chapter 14 in the History Alive book so please have your scholar take the practice assessment online at home to review.  They will have a Ch. 14 quiz on Wed.  We will move into talking about the Bill of Rights specifically at the end of the week.

ELAR: We have been working hard on our inferencing skills and incorporating the skills into our Book Clubs.  The students are enjoying the novels they picked and their Book Clubs.  Next week we will move into talking about non-fiction and text features. Have your scholar look at a magazine and newspaper and have them point out the different features that make up non-fiction.  We will also continue to work on our inferencing in our Book Clubs at the end of the week.

We are close to the holidays and I know that the tendency is for the students to become less motivated in their studies. Please encourage them to continue to work hard.  We have just a week and a half until Thanksgiving Break and then just three short weeks after that before Christmas.  We want them to rest up during the breaks because we still have a hard road ahead of us before the STAAR testing in the spring.  Please remember that this is a crucial year for your scholar.  They have three tests: science, reading and math and mastery on the reading and math tests is required to move on to 6th grade.

Thank you for all you do and please have a great weekend!