Hello Parents,
We ended our Physical Science unit and began Earth Science (Rocks and Minerals) last week. The Electricity and Magnetism Assessments were given back on Thursday, and some scholars requested extra credit assignments. Those will be given out tomorrow.
Happy Sunday to you! A field trip letter went home on Friday. We will tour Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana on January 31st. Tomorrow, scholars will be given instructions for the mission project. It is the same project that Mr. Boyce is giving his students. The written essay, including the research for the report, will be done in class, but they will build a mission at home. You can buy a mission kit, but the project must fit inside of a banker's box (filing box). The letter will go home tomorrow, or you can read it here.
In writing, after reviewing the persuasive writing assessment, we have chosen (or will choose on Monday) writing goals based on the Common Core Standards. Progress on these individual goals will be tracked and students will determine when they are ready to move on to another goal. Ask your child about their goal this week (I will finish the individual student conferences tomorrow.)
I have added an "Alternate Homework Assignments" page to the "Other" section of the website. These are assignments that students may choose to do in place of one assigned homework activity. For example, if a student wishes, he or she can do one of the math challenges from the website instead of the practice book pages.
This week, we also declared Wednesdays to be Wonder Wednesdays, and will have about an hour each week to research a topic of our choice. This is our Genius Hour. We will focus on inquiry-based research and create different products throughout the year to show what we learned during this time. Any work outside the classroom on these passion projects is completely optional. We will post updates about our progress on these projects periodically.
Our focus in math continues to be fractions and division. There will be a pre-quiz on Thursday and a quiz on Friday.
The Language Arts page has links for the Poem of the Week, reading log, and Treasures Skills for this week. As usual, there will be a spelling quiz and reading comprehension assessment Friday.
I would like to have a class party before the break to celebrate all of our hard work. More information will be sent out soon.
Have a great week,
Christina Polay
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