Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Week Ahead: 9-10-2012 to 9-14-2012

Coming home before the weekend are some valuable items for your child to complete.  The first item is a spelling/ vocabulary list, the second item is the guideline for our "All About Me" website project, and the third item is their reading logs for next week.  Please be sure to locate these items and keep them in a safe spot.  We will have student pictures on September 11, 2012.  Extra forms/ envelopes are in the office in case you need one.  Every Wednesday your child's library books are due, please remind your child to bring them to school that day.  Those who had difficulty getting the items for the take home experiment can contact me via e-mail, and I will make arrangments for your child to get either that experiment, or an additional assignment done to make up for it.  We always need parent volunteers, if you would like to help, click on the Parent Volunteer link on the right hand side of the class web site at: http://up2dategrade6.blogspot.com.  Those who returned the blue slips with an e-mail, will be signed up for the class web site.  You will get an e-mail asking you to confirm this with a link from blogspot or Goggle.  By clicking on the link, you will be automatically updated on changes with the class site and with new posts.  Those who do not want this can just delete the e-mail and you will remain unregistered.  We had an excellent start the first week.  I hope to get some calls made next week to some of you whose children were exceptional in clasroom as things start to wind down from the busy opening days!  Have a great weekend and, "Go Notre Dame Irish!" 

Science News
We have a link to the take home experiment page in case some of you missed or lost it.  Go to the class web site and download it.  The link is on the right hand side labeled, "Acid Rain Experiment".  We took the unit pretest for measurement and the Scientific Method and did some demonstrations like the "Bloody Hand" and "Changing the Chemical's Color".  Next week we will continue to go over the Scientific Procedure with a couple of more experiments including making slime on Friday, September 14, 2012.   Expect a science project explanation to come home either Friday or Monday for the "Learn the Process" project.  This will be due around mid to late October.  Project guidelines for this unit's project will come out on Monday, September 10, 2012.

Social Studies News
This week (and continuing into next week), we worked on map skills and identifying the parts of a map.  Next week we will create our own maps with a key, identify different types of maps and their uses, and the five themes of geography.

Reading News
You all should have received a reading log for next week.  Students need to read 140 minutes total for the week (20 minutes a day).  They will receive 1 point per minute read for a toal of 140 points.  If you did not get the sheet, download it from the web site by clicking on the "Reading Log 9-7 to 9-13" link.  This week we learned about "Just Right Books", set norms for reading instruction, and took our first opening year reading assessment.  Next week we will be working on Metacognition (monitoring our reading and thinking) and take the District Reading Assessment.

Writing News
This week we did our prewrite, first, and second rough drafts for what we will be writing on our own student made websites.  We will get some computer lab time for this project, but also kids can create/ work on them at home too.  Look for instructions and guidelines to go home on Friday, September 7th.  If you did not get this paper, go to the class web site and download one from the link entitled, "All About Me".  This project is due October 1, 2012.  Next week we will be doing our District Writing Assessment on Wednesday- Friday.

Math News
Next week we will take our district math assessment.  This will give a baseline score to monitor your child's progress throughout the year, and allow us to target some kids we would like to provide with additional help to get them up to speed.  We will also wrap up our MEAP Review and move into the procedure for solving story problems.  We will have a MEAP Camp for some students who received invitations, if you did not get one but think it would be valuable to help your child do better, please contact Ms. Grenfell here at Marshall Upper Elementary.

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