November 2, 2009

Two weeks of school left before intersession! Be sure to stay all caught up with all of your classes so you will not have late work to do over intersession. Your last day of class is November 13th and you will return to school on November 30th.

Social: We will begin this week learning about Sparta and their conflicts with the Athenians. We will also watch the Disney Classic, Hercules. Just a reminder to be rereading throughout the unit. We will also have short pop quizzes throughout this unit.


Science: This week students will finish their unit on energy and matter. They will learn the difference between expansion and contraction and what causes it and learn what distillation is through an online example. Students at-home lab on phase changes is due Thursday, November 5th, State of Matter Brochures are due Wednesday, November 11th, and the test will take place on Wednesday as well. A review sheet will be coming home in your child's Thursday folder.


Language Arts: This week Ms. Wallwork's class will not have a spelling test. We will instead be taking "practice" reading comprehension test on Monday and taking care of Rule 12 on Friday. We will also begin typing and putting together our poetry books. Just a reminder, if you have any extra stickers, card stock, or anything that you think would be helpful in putting these books together that you would like to donate, it would be greatly appreciated. Ms. Kolstad's class is completing spelling lesson 9 or spelling review, grammar rule #12, and the bonus word is diabolical. Students are still working on poetry this week including sonnets and diamante.


Math:


Ms. Wallwork's class will start out the week taking a test and then continue working with area of a variety of shapes, writing the powers of 10 with exponents, and classifying triangles by the length and measure of the angles.



Mrs. Swanson's math class is taking a test on Monday and aiming for more 100% scores, an investigation on collecting, organizing, displaying, and interpreting data, Tuesday, and doing lessons Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday on percents of a number, renaming fractions by multiplying by 1, equivalent division problems, and finding unknowns in fractions and decimal problems.

Mrs. Schmitz's class is estimating answers by rounding first, dividing and story (rate) problems.
Ms. Pueringer's class is doing Investigation 9, Bar graphs, Lessons 91-94. Concepts to work on multiplying fractions, simplifying fractions, using the Greatest Common Factor (GCF) to reduce fractions.

Reading: Ms. Wallwork's class is continuing A Wrinkle in Time and we will finish it up before the end of intersession with the movie A Wrinkle in Time. We will be starting The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank when we return from break. Continue to study those vocabulary words, don't forget to use dictionary.com for the correct pronunciation.

Mrs. Schmitz reading class is reading the Prince and the Pauper. We only have 15 lessons to go until level 6.

Ms. Pueringer's class is reading Where the Red Fern Grows.

Reminders: Last day of school is Novemeber 13th, students will return on November 30th. What is the Greek word for city-state? STRIDE Academy will be honoring Veterans on November 11th at 8:45 in the school gymnasium. All Veterans are invited to attend. Don't forget if you are doing a poster or writing an essay they are due by November 5th.