Week of January 23rd

Tyler and his cat, Buddy, getting lost in a good book!

TJ's mom, Angie, had her baby this week! Isn't he soooooo adorable?! Welcome to the world, Coy!

These cute girls matched and didn't even plan it! 

Dylan and Mya made the sweetest picture for me. Love you, girls!

This week in reading we are moving on to Unit 3, Week 5. We will focus on the essential question: How is each event in history unique? We have several history-buffs in our class, so I know students will bring lots of great background knowledge to this week's readings. The expository texts we will read are: "Riding the Rails West!" "Discovering Life Long Ago," and "The Long Road to Oregon." We will focus on the skills are summarizing, sequencing events, suffixes, and combining sentences with verbs. 

Our spelling words this week are: 

And we will focus on the following vocabulary words:

 

In math, we will finish Chapter 8: Understanding Fractions. So far, we have been working hard on representing fractions using a bar model, as parts of a group, using a number line, and with a circle model. We will dive deeper into fraction concepts such as comparing fractions and equivalent fractions in the following weeks.  Please keep encouraging your child to work on ST Math and Xtra Math at home -- it really does make a difference!

In science, we have learned about different forces and six different types of simple machines. The six types of simple machines are: Inclined Planes (ramps, slides, ladders), Levers (a bat, teeter totter, wheel barrow, light switch), Wheel and Axle (cars, bicycle, wagon, Ferris Wheel), Pulley (flagpole, window blinds), Wedges (ax, knife), and Screw (bottle cap, jar lids, light bulb). Simply put, simple machines make life/work easier. This week we take out the PLTW and begin building different simple machines, beginning with an inclined plane. 

This week for Social Studies, we will focus on the stories from our Wonders series to learn about our country's past. 

Several students are not bringing a snack or water bottle to school each day. Please make sure your child is bringing a healthy snack to school every day -- if they don't, they are starving by lunchtime! Thank you to the few families who have donate "extra" snacks to those students who bring any. This helps ease the burden for me financially a little, as I have spent A LOT of money on snacks for students this year. Long story short, snack donations are greatly appreciated ;)

Also, I have several students beating me to school in the morning. Technically, students should not arrive at school until 8:00, when there is a teacher to supervise morning walk. If you need to bring your child earlier than 8:00, please let me know so that we can figure out a plan. Thanks!

Please sign and return your child's report card envelope. And, as always, if you have ANY questions/comments/concerns, please call or email me.

Have a lovely, relaxing, enjoyable weekend! See you Monday!

Code Word = Inclined Plane