Monday, January 26, 2015

We had an awesome short week last week and were able to accomplish a lot even with the field trip to Foster High School for "Once Upon a Mattress".

Here is what we will be learning this week:

Math: We are still in our measurement unit and are studying area, perimeter and volume.  Please still review with your students how to do conversions with both metric and customary units of measurement. Khan Academy has several great videos to help practice these. We will have a spiral review on Friday.

Science: We are still working on our Biomes project presentations.  They are due on Wednesday and the students are hard at work on their posters.  I am impressed with the creativity I am seeing with each of them as they create their posters.  We won't be needing our MLDs this week as the research portion is finished and we are just working on transferring that information to the drawings.  The homework this week is on StemScopes: Food Webs and is due Friday.  The students MUST be working on StemScopes.

Social Studies: We are starting our unit on the Industrial Revolution and will be discussing this over the next few weeks. We will have an in-class project next week and the students will be creating a brochure on the inventions during this time period.  They can bring their MLDs next week.

ELAR: We will be starting our writing process this week on a persuasive writing piece.  We are working on several activities in reading to practice drawing conclusions, making inferences, and providing textual evidence to support our answers.

Have a great week!

Monday, January 19, 2015

I hope everyone enjoyed the extra long weekend.  We have a busy, short week ahead!

Math: We are still working on our measurement unit.  We will be practicing how to do measurement conversions this week using real-world problems, tables, and how to do metric system conversions using the King Henry method.  We will have our Module 13 assessment on Friday over measurement conversions.

Science:  We will be working on our Biomes group research project this week.  The students are allowed to bring their MLDs or Mobile Learning Devices to school for Tuesday and Wednesday (iPods, tablets, smartphones, etc.).  These devices will ONLY be used for research.  Please do not worry if your student does not have access to one.  We also have grade-level laptops that they can use and one class iPad.  They will also need to bring a sheet of posterboard by Thursday to finish their projects.  Their homework for the week will be in StemScopes: Interdependency.  It will be due Friday.  We are seeing a huge correlation between the students who continually work in StemScopes and the ones who do well on their assessments and nine weeks test.  They MUST be practicing in StemScopes in order to be successful.

Social Studies: We are working in History Alive, Chapter 17: The Diverse Peoples of the West this week.  Their HA Ch. 17 quiz will be next Monday.

ELAR: We are starting our Book Clubs this week and all students were given a choice of book and from there we formed our "clubs". They will be meeting twice a week to read together and to have discussions and answer questions about what they have read.  Each week, one club member will be responsible for "hosting" the discussion meeting and they are able to bring snacks for their club.  Please make sure the snacks are simple and not messy and if plates are needed please have them send those as well. The class is really excited about this!

A couple of reminders:
***Thursday: We will be traveling to Foster HS to watch "The Princess and the Pea" production.  Field trip permission slips went home in HOWL folders Friday and need to be returned ASAP. We will be back by lunchtime.

***Report cards will go home on Thursday

***Kindergarten pictures are due by Jan. 30th.  Please send those up as soon as possible if you haven't yet.  If you don't have an actual kinder picture, any picture from that age would be fine.  They WILL be returned to you.

Thank you again for sharing your children with me!

Monday, January 12, 2015

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  This week we will be wrapping up the 2nd 9 weeks grading period.  The 9 weeks assessment schedule is as follows:

Wed: Reading and Social Studies
Thurs: Science and Math

Your student were sent home a very in-depth review sheet last week that detailed all of the objects for every subject that they will be tested on.  Please utilize all websites/materials listed on the study guide.

Here is what we will be covering this week in preparation for the end of the nine weeks:

Math: We started last week on measurement and will be working on how to convert units of measurement using both the metric and customary units.  We will be reviewing how to add/subt/multiply/divide fractions for the nine weeks assessment.  Please visit my class Facebook page to see videos for reminders on how to use the different methods.

Science:  We have finished up the section on Earth's rotations and will be discussing the Earth, Sun, and Moon this week.  This week's homework is assigned on StemScopes and will be due Friday.  There will be a major assessment over this section on Friday but if they are prepared for the nine weeks assessment they will do fine on the test just for this section.

Social Studies: We will be reviewing over the three units we covered this nine weeks: the Constitution, the creation of our government and Westward Expansion in preparation for the nine weeks assessment.  Remember that the assessment is not just testing them on their knowledge of this information but also of the application of it.  They will be getting an additional study guide today hitting on the major people/events of these time periods and it needs to be studied in addition to their social studies journal.

ELAR: We are studying sensory imagery this week and prefixes/suffixes.  This is the last week to reach their AR goals so please encourage them to still be reading 20 min/ night and to take their AR tests.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Happy New Year to my entire Huggins "family"!!! I hope that the break was a restful one for everyone!

Here are this week's happenings:

Math: We are wrapping up our unit on coordinate grids and how to plot points using both given points and one based on a rule and an input/output table.  We will be moving into measurement on Thursday. 

Science: We finished up prior to the break our unit on Weather, Climate, and the Water Cycle.  This week we are studying the Earth, Sun, and Moon.  We are discussing the difference between the Earth's rotation vs. It's revolution. Our assessment for this unit will be next Friday, January 16th.  The homework this week is assigned in StemScopes under Earth's Rotation.

Social Studies: We are almost finished with our unit on Westward Expansion.  There will be a History Alive Ch. 16 quiz on Thursday.  Please have your students studying on the tutorial website and they also have been taking notes in their interactive notebooks.

ELAR: We will be beginning our literature circles this week.  We are still working on the elements of Poetry.

Nine Weeks Assessments will be next week and a review sheet was sent home today with your students that had all of the topics we covered in each subject.  Please see the notes at the top of each section that will tell you where to find information in each subject.  The schedule will be as follows:

Reading and Social Studies will be given on Wednesday, Jan. 14th and Math and Science will be given on Thursday, Jan. 15th.

We will have an author visit on Monday.  Please check your email for the attachment.  Thank you and have a great week!