Class Activities for the Week of January 24th-29th

Hello parents and students....well we're back in full swing and ready for another week of fun at Discovery School.




IMPORTANT REMINDERS:


Our mid-year MAP testing is under way.  We've completed Math and Reading tests, and will be sitting our Language Usage test this Wednesday.  So far the trend in our scores has been very positive.  Please contact me via email if you're curious about your child's scores.  Otherwise you can read about them on our mid-quarter progress report.

MATH


This our last week of division!!  We will be practicing our ability to divide with two digit divisors, and our ability to apply our division skills to word based problems.  Wednesday will be a review day before our test Thursday.  TEST THURSDAY!!   I will be sending home a practice test Wednesday as per usual.   Friday begins a new unit, as we finally say goodbye to computation and number sense and get into some geometry.

READING


We will be continuing to read our class novel, 'Million Dollar Shot', and apply our Cause and Effect reading skills to help us evaluate the story.  We will also be reading to monitor each student's comprehension of the text and will be having a short quiz and homework as an assessment.  We will also work on reading free-verse poetry, as we learn more about the structure and form of free-verse poetry so that we can apply it to our own writing.

WRITING

We are ready to begin creating our own poetry.  The students have gained a feel for expression and description through language and will now explore what they've learned by experimenting with writing their own free-verse poems.  We will be looking for the use of metaphors and similes and the use of words that sound nice when read aloud, as well as convey meaning.

SPELLING


Our spelling words this week will focus on words that end with the suffix -er and -or.

SCIENCE


In our motion and design unit we will be testing the effects of air resistance on a vehicles motion by designing and building vehicles with sails.  In this experiment we will be learning about concepts such air resistance, drag, and aerodynamics.

GRAMMAR


In grammar this week we will be working on the reading/writing skill of main idea and supporting details.  The students will learn about thee concepts and then practice identifying the main idea in a piece of text then and providing their own supporting details.


CHARACTER STUDIES


In this week we will be following up last week's lesson where we learned about the concept of diligence.  We will discuss why diligence is an important character trait, and give examples of how we can use diligence to improve ourselves.


Thanks for reading everyone!!   Have a great week!!