Week of August 12-16

Good morning! We hope everyone is having an excellent Monday morning!

New Items to Highlight
* Our nurse needs a "Personal Health History" form filled out for each student in the school. This form will be coming home today. Please return as soon as possible.
*Choice Reading: To allow this group of students as much time to read as possible, we will begin having students read as part of their daily morning work. Students are being given a log today to help them keep track of the books they are reading and the Reading Counts points they have earned. Each child needs to earn at least 20 Reading Counts points by September 30.
*Reading tests this year: Our new reading series has a different set-up for weekly tests. Students will be tested over the weekly vocabulary words, skills, and strategies. However, the comprehension aspect of the test will be over a "Cold Read" of a story. This format is more similar to ISTEP+ and allows students extra practice in reading a passage and responding to comprehension questions. These tests are taken online. Students will immediately see their scores after taking the test. You can also log-on at home to see their test scores. All scores will be recorded in PowerSchool.
*PowerSchool: It is very beneficial to sign up for weekly updates for your child in PowerSchool. With these weekly updates, you could see your child's grades and monitor them throughout the grading period. Missing assignments are also marked in PowerSchool in case you had a question about an assignment. Please let us know if you need help setting up this weekly communication OR if you have a question about a grade. Grades have been entered for last week.


Here is an overview for this week.
Math: Students will continue with Unit 1 this week. They will be learning about divisibility rules, prime and composite numbers, square numbers (and "unsquaring" a number), factor strings, and prime factorization. This unit is an important foundation for the rest of the school year, so it is important for students to be present for instruction with homework completed.
Science: Students in Physical Science will be learning about matter, mixtures, and solutions. This week will include an investigation of matter and an introduction into this chapter's key vocabulary.
Reading: This week's basal story is Thunder Rose. The strategy for the week is summarizing. The skill for the week is cause and effect. Students will also begin to learn about our procedures for Book Clubs. We hope to get books into their hands as soon as possible. We will also be working as a class to build some of our reading stations to be used throughout the year.
Writing: Students will continue to set up their writer's notebooks and begin writing a couple of short pieces. We will also begin our weekly grammar focus. This week we will focus on editing and learning about the parts of speech.
Social Studies: Please contact your child's Social Studies teacher for information about this subject.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions!
Mrs. Pfahler and Miss Scott