I hope you have a chance to relax and enjoy some family time weekend. It's getting cold out there!! Thank you to all of you who took the time to come out and visit our classroom on Thursday night for Open House. it was so nice to see all of you, and the students were SO proud showing you around the classroom!
Important Dates
Class of 2014 T-shirts ~ due Monday, October 28th - Information about the Class T-shirts came home this week - you need to choose a size and how you would like your child's name to appear on the t-shirt. It is very important that these forms are returned on Monday so the committee can get the information to the printer - they would like to have the t-shirts soon so the kids can start showing their OMS graduating pride!!
Halloween Party ~ Wednesday, October 31st - A great big thank you to our room moms ~ Mrs. Orzechowski, Mrs. Thompson, and Mrs. Tader ~ for all the time they've invested in planning for such a fun party for the kids! They are so excited :) If you signed up to bring something in for the party, please send in the supplies ASAP. I haven't received many supplies at this point. Thank you so much for your help!
Please refer to the Halloween Food Letter on this blog for information about the food being served at the party.
If you child is planning on coming home for lunch, they must have a permission slip turned in by tomorrow. Our lunch schedule is modified on Halloween if your child stays for lunch. They will eat first at 12:15, then have recess until 12:55. At that point, all students will be brought in to change into their costumes.
Our festivities begin with our annual Halloween parade beginning at 1:30 and follow the route: OMS to Greens Park, South on Douglas, West on Oakton, North on Belmont, Back to OMS through our playground area. Please plan to join us...and don't forget your camera! Our party will follow the parade.
Veteran's Day ~ Monday, November 11th - NO SCHOOL!
Think Energy! Presentation ~ Tuesday, November 12th - The National Energy Foundation will be presenting Energy conservation to our students, tying into our spring science unit on Energy. More information will come on this presentation - watch for details.
Cultural Arts ~ Spooky Hollow ~ Students were treated to a humorous presentation of the classic play Sleepy Hollow this week by our Cultural Arts Committee. A great time was had by everyone as this "spooky" comedy brought on the Halloween season. Mrs. Watanuki and a few students were even invited to participate in the drama! I've included some pictures of the production below:
Math
My math class will test on Unit 3 (Geometry) on Wednesday, and pre-test on Unit 4 (Division) on Thursday. They should prepare for the test by playing any of the Unit 3 games (Angle Tangle and Polygon Capture), then study the review that will come home on Tuesday. As always, I will have a review session at lunch recess the day before the test (Tuesday) - please encourage your child to come if they are struggling with the concepts. Unit 4 is another computation unit that requires automaticity of math facts and repetition. Please encourage your child to play the Everyday Mathematics math facts games, as well as practice long division problems.
Social Studies
Our social studies unit starts with the rising tensions that led to the Revolutionary War. In the first unit, students will study 6 major events that led to the colonists' decision to declare their independence: The French and Indian War, The Proclamation of 1763, The Stamp Act, The Boston Massacre, The Boston Tea Party, and The Intolerable Act. We spend a great deal of time discussing perspective in this unit, and try to help the students understand both the perspective of the colonists and the British in the events that led to the war. We will debate "Who's fault was it, anyways?" and our research project will look at both perspectives of these 6 events. We started this unit by helping the students understand the perspective of the colonists with a fun activity - I read them a "letter" from the PTA declaring they could no longer have classroom parties during instructional hours, and they would have to pay if they wanted to be a part of the party (sorry to all you PTA moms!!). Their reaction was priceless, as they started to plan protests, sign petitions, and design posters. It was easy to make connections to the colonists' perspective once I let them know I pranked them - though it took more than a few moments to get them to forgive me ;) The learning was quite impactful, though...and it was extremely fun to prank them all!
The Unit 10 Assessment will also be on Wednesday, October 30th. I realize the students will have 2 tests on Wednesday (math and social studies), but with Halloween on Thursdays, I don't want the kids testing on that day or the following day. We will have plenty of time to prepare for the assessments in class, and I will lighten the load in our other subjects so they don't have as much homework Monday and Tuesday night so they will be able to focus on preparing for the tests.
Reading
We returned to our Treasures curriculum this week and worked on the comprehension strategy of inferencing. This is a challenging concept as students learn to dig deeper into the text and "read between the lines," but they were able to come to a deeper understanding of the text through discussion. Students will start our new novel groups this week as we shift our focus to the Revolutionary War. The topic in many of these books does present the war in an age-appropriate, but realistic perspective. Each novel presents the war from the perspective of a child about the age of your child, as they wrestle with the difficult realties of war. If you have any concerns or questions about the topics discussed in these novels, please let me know.
Writing
Students continued to work on strong word choice, figurative language, and poetry as they created their fall poems earlier this week. They enjoyed the change of pace, as they pondered the change of season this time of year, and had fun creating their leaf rubbings for the backdrop of their poems. I hope you all enjoyed reading their poems when you visited for Open House! We did return to WEX at the end of the week, and will continue working on developing our personal narrative stories through next week. Students will have a final narrative due at the following week.
Book Buddies
Our 5th graders were SO excited to get started with their Kindergarten Book Buddies this week! Many of them fondly remember their 5th grade Book Buddies when they were Kindergarteners themselves, and were excited to give the same experience to a little kindergartener. We met this week and just spent time on an activity that helped them get to know each other a little better. We will be meeting with them every Friday afternoon for the remainder of the year, working with the little ones on important literacy skills. I've included pictures of our first meeting below:
As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. Have a fantastic weekend ~
If you are tempted to make a poor choice because no one is
looking, remember this: Someone is really looking. You are
looking, and what you think about you is important.
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