A Preview of the Next Few Weeks

Now, what in the world is this? Trying to determine seasons.....

Christian and Nicolas

Alex Y working hard!

Becky with her new book!

Sarah, Erisa, and Madison working hard!

Working on ISS ;-)

Laroy working hard.

It is hard to believe that the first 9 weeks ends tomorrow! In some respects it seems that we just met our new friends, and at other times we are just moving right along like we have been friends forever.

We have really worked hard this first 9 weeks to establish patterns that will help us for the rest of the year. Report card grades will reflect your student's progress during this time. We would encourage you to review your student's subject work folders so you can see how they are progressing through units of study.

These next few weeks we will be working with fractions. Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division of fractions to be exact. This past week we have spent a lot of time with the words: factors, multiples, factor pairs, prime and composite numbers, prime factorization, least common multiples (LCM) and greatest common factors (GCF). It is important that your student understand these terms because this will sink or swim their ship in the next few weeks.

We are also working on INDEPENDENT SILENT SEATWORK (ISS)- Some of us are having a very difficult time focusing during work periods. We are trying to make students aware of "time constraints" and the fact that there is NO REDO on the FCAT. The ability to stay focused, work hard, and finish the task is our goal.

We will begin our second Literature Circles next week. This is a great way to cover many benchmarks in our reading standards. We will still be working in our Reader, but our Literature Circle books will help us reach our reading goal for the 2nd 9 weeks!

In Social Studies we will start the 2nd nine weeks with Explorer Reports. Students have received their explorers and their books. They have also received their rubric which shows them what we expect their final project to look like.

In Science we are studying the Moon, Seasons, and the Earth's movement around the Sun. Moon journals should be completed in the next 10 days. This always seems to stump our students- how the Earth's position can affect the weather and seasons.