April 6, 2010

Welcome to Spring and the last quarter of this school year! It is exciting to actually have nice spring weather outside. Conferences were held last Thursday, April 1st. If you did not attend your child's conference PLEASE call their homeroom teacher and reschedule.


We are well underway preparing for the MCA's this month. To help you out at home be sure to sign onto Study Island and spend some time working on math and reading.

Social: We will begin our unit on Industrialism, Capitalism, and Socialism. Students will understand the impact the Industrial Revolution and the working conditions for children in England.


Science: Students will begin their final unit for this year on Oceans! This unit is split into two smaller sections, the first is the Oceans: Structure and the second is Oceans: Movement and Life. For the first two lessons students will review the continents and oceans of the Earth and the features of the ocean floor. With a partner students will make a model of the ocean floor. We will need some shoe boxes for this project!


Language Arts: We will continue with MCA prep work, involving a lot of vocabulary. Your packet that was handed out on April 6th is due on April 9th. We are also beginning with Act III of Julius Caesar. Students will be answering questions and journaling about what they read. Julius Caesar will end with a large project of the students choice.

Reading: Ms. Wallwork's class will be learning about the Antarctica this week and also watching a movie about Ernest Shackleton and his quest to become the first man to reach the South Pole.

Math:

Ms. Wallwork's class will begin this week with lesson 81, using proportions to solve percents, finding the area of a circle, and multiplication in scientific notation.

Mrs. Swanson's math class started the week with a reteaching packet from lesson most commonly missed on the benchmark test given. The rest of the week they worked on lessons dealign with functions and graphing functions, transversal, and sums of the angle emasures of triangles and quadrilaterals.

4th-6th Grade P.E.: We will be starting a whiffleball unit. The students will be learning the following baseball and softball fundamentals: swing weight transfer and pivot, crow hops, force outs & tag ups. The students will also be practicing the events for their spring fitness test. They will be doing pull ups, push ups and sit ups. Please encourage your child to practice these events at home. With the change of seasons there is a great opportunity to get outside and be active. Each child should be accumulating at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity per day. With your continued help at home, we will collaboratively be able to ensure that all students are able to attain and maintain a level of health enhancing physical fitness

Updates and Reminders:

Information was handed out at conferences about the end of the year trip to Wolf Ridge. Please start filling out this information and returning it as soon as possible. In this weeks Thursday folder you will find the health form that will need to be filled out and returned.

Please remind your child to bring a white t-shirt into school by Friday, April 9th. Next week the sixth graders will create t-shirts to wear on MCA testing days. Those dates again are Tuesday and Wednesday April 20th and 21st for Reading and Tuesday and Wednesday April 27th and 28th for Math.

Don't forget the groundbreaking ceremony for the new middle school building Saturday, April 10th. Please RSVP to Julie in the office if you plan on attending.