5-2 Updates 9/15

Hello 5-2 families ~

It looks like fall is finally upon us!  I hope you have enjoyed the quieter, indoor activities a rainy day brings :)

Reminders

With the beautiful fall weather upon us :), please remember we can have sudden drops in temperature.  Please help your child to be prepared by having a jacket on hand.  Your child is to wear a jacket during recess if the temperature is below 70 degrees.

If your child brings a cell phone to school, please have them turn it off before they come to school.  Several of the students have phones going off during the day in their backpacks.  Our policy insists they do not bring cell phones to school.  As a parent, I understand the necessity of giving your child a phone at times, so I simply ask they have them turned off and keep them in their backpacks.  

Room Moms

Our room moms this year are:  Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Tader, and Mrs. Orzechowski.  A great big thank you to these wonderful ladies for giving of their time and energies to helping us out in 5-2 ~ I so appreciate you!!  The room moms would like to be able to get in touch with all of you via email.  I plan to forward distribution list on to them this week ~ if you have any objections at all to me passing on your email information on to the room moms, please let me know ASAP.  

Picture Day - Picture Day was originally on the calendar for September 24th, but it is now scheduled for October 2nd...you have two more weeks to get your smiles on :)

Math

Our Unit 1 Assessment is Monday.  All of your children have a review packet they completed this week - please have them pull this out to study for the test.  They can also study for the test by playing any of the Unit 1 games on Everyday Mathematics.  Your child should have their username and password on the front page of their assignment notebook. If you would like me to send you their login information, please just let me know.  

Science

Thank you for your prompt response to my request for permission for your child to participate in the physical activity that began our Human Body Unit.  We asked them to run a few laps around our field, then immediately sit down and observe the physical changes in their bodies.  Throughout this unit, we will be defining how those changes are responses of the different systems in our bodies to physical activity.  For the rest of the week, we learned more about the skeletal and muscular system, and spent a couple of days on joints.  On Friday, they chose different supplies to design and build a joint model.  They recorded a short presentation with their groups and their models, then posted them on Edmodo - ask them to share their videos with you!

Reading

This week, we focused on plot and setting in tall tales.  They students heard and read some fun stories about legends, such as Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan, and Johnny Appleseed.  They took their Weekly Assessment today, and their scores will be coming home on Monday.  As I said before, if you would like to see a detailed, electronic copy of this test, please let me know.  If your child did not pass a portion of the weekly assessments, they will be receiving a Re-do Contract with some additional practice on the skill they missed.  This contract needs to be signed by you and returned to school with the work completed by the due date.  They will be given another opportunity to take the test later in the week.  If you have any questions at all, please let me know.  

Writing

We spent the later part of this week extending our reading unit by writing tall tales of our own.  The students had fun playing with figurative language, such as hyperboles and similes, while creating entertaining stories and sharing them with their classmates.  A final copy of the tall tale and an illustration is due on Monday, though most students did complete these in class on Friday.  They will be mounted and hanging on the wall for you to come in and read during Open House :)

Have a spectacular week!

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”  
~ Martin Luther King Jr.