Our week in learning 2/26

  Botany Notebook Check - These are the requirements for the botany notebook that
will be collected on Friday.

Click here to play Botany Jeopardy!

This quarter has whizzed by so quickly, and now our eighth week is here.

Mrs. Luttjohann (pronounced LUTT-john) will be joining us for the next two
weeks as a temporary Teaching Assistant! Mrs. Luttjohann is currently an
Athenaeum teacher working with kindergartners. She is excited to join our
class until spring break, and we will warmly welcome her.

This week in language arts, students will compose their own five-paragraph 

essay based on the outlines and texts used in class. They will compose the 

outline in class on Monday for their entire essay and add one or two paragraphs 

each night. On Thursday, students will be given time in class to write their final draft, 

which is due on Friday morning. In order to respect our homework time each night, 

please do not have your student write the entire essay in one sitting--instead, 

students will be assigned 1-2 paragraphs of writing each night, part of which 

should be completed in class.

In literature, students will continue reading up to chapter 26 of the Secret Garden. 

Next week, students will complete the book and write a short three-paragraph essay 

about the most dynamic character in the story, comparing and contrasting their 

character at the beginning and end. 

In science this week, students will play a review game on Monday to prepare for 

the unit test on Tuesday. The unit test will be a combination of multiple choice and 

short answer questions, similar to the study guide. On Thursday, students will take

 notes on plant anatomy and take a short quiz on Friday. Science notebooks will be

 collected for participation points on Friday. All notes taken in class during the plant

 unit must be present in the notebook to receive full credit. If your child is missing 

any of the notes, they may ask me for a copy and glue them in.

This week in history, students will continue learning about the Civil War. Students 

will be learning about the life of a slave, the Missouri Compromise, growth of anti-slavery 

feelings, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and growing differences between the North and South.

 We will learn about Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Students will finish 

learning about pre-Civil War material before break and have a short quiz over the notes 

in their foldables. We will do an activity where students create quizzes and turn them in.

 I will then create a quiz using some of their questions. Their very short quiz will take place

 on Friday, 3/9. Please note that there is sensitive material regarding slavery throughout 

the unit, particularly during the lesson Monday, 2/26.  

In math this week, we will start their unit on percentages. This week, students will practice

 converting between fractions, percentages, and decimals by creating a foldable for their 

math notebooks. There will be no math groups for the rest of the quarter. We will begin with 

math groups again in quarter 4.  

Our week in learning 2/20

 Our short week will culminate in MAP testing on Friday, February 23. Due to this, 

we will have an abbreviated schedule on Friday, but will still have math, history, and

 language arts. The quarter is quickly nearing its close with unit exams - history on Wednesday, 

math on Thursday, and science next Tuesday.

This week in language arts, students will compose their own five-paragraph essay 

based on the outlines and texts used in class.

In literature, students will continue reading up to chapter 23 of the Secret Garden. 

This week in science, students will receive the study guide for the plant unit test, 

which will take place on Tuesday, February 27. The study guide is due Monday, 

February 26. We will play a review game in class before the test. Students will begin 

wrapping up their plant unit by studying the two different types of seed plants, 

monocots and dicots.

 In history, students will finish their Westward Expansion unit, taking the unit test on 
Wednesday. On Friday, they will begin the Civil War unit by discussing the Union and 
Confederacy boundaries.

In math, students will study story problems about volume, and will take the unit test 
on Thursday.

Our week in learning 2/12

This week of school is the beginning of crunch time. The history study guide will be sent
home today. Great Hearts Day is this Wednesday, February 14.

This week in history, students will continue learning about Westward Expansion 
before the Civil War. Students will learn about the idea of Manifest Destiny, the 
additions of Texas and Oregon, the War with Mexico, and settling the far west, such
 as the movement of the Mormons to Utah. The study guide will go home on Monday, 
February 12th and is due on the day of their test, Wednesday, February 21st. While 
there is an R&R weekend before the test, students will still have 5 non-R&R days to 
complete the study guide and prepare for the test.

In math this week, we will start learning about measures and volumes. We will begin 
with converting units and work towards finding the volume of a rectangular prism. This 
is a short unit, so there will be a test next week. There will be no math groups this week, 
as we are just starting a new unit. 

In science this week, students will continue to explore angiosperms, or flowering plants, 
by studying pollination, dissecting a flower, and watching a video about pollinators. There 
is a short quiz on parts of a flower on Tuesday. 

This week, students will practice creating outlines from short essays. They will focus on 

identifying the main idea and supporting details of each paragraph. Next week, they will 

practice writing from outlines.

In literature, students will continue reading up to chapter 21 of the Secret Garden.

 

Our week in learning 2/5

A short, but important, week has arrived: We are now in the middle of the third quarter!

This week in language arts, students will present their explorer reports in history on

 Monday and Tuesday mornings. Posters should be brought to class on Monday.

Students will review past grammar skills and add a new skill to their notebooks: 

predicate adjectives! Predicate adjectives are adjectives occurring in the sentence 

predicate that describe the subject of the sentence. They follow a linking verb.

Ex: Betty is nice. “Nice” is a predicate adjective.

Students will have a brief quiz over this skill on Wednesday morning.

In literature, students will continue reading up to chapter 19 of the Secret Garden. 

In science this week, students will learn about gymnosperms, which are seeds that

 are commonly found in pine cones, and their pollination and fertilization. They will 

have the opportunity to read about gymnosperms in two articles and answer questions 

about them. 

In math this week, we will continue learning about decimals. Students will divide 
decimals by 2-digit whole numbers by the decimal 0.1 and 0.01, and divide a decimal
 by another decimal. Graph paper is very helpful to line up decimals and keep their 
work organized. We will be using some in class, but it might be useful to have some 
at home to use with homework. Math groups will be this Wednesday, 8:00-9:00. On Friday,
there will be a decimal unit test.

This week in history, students will continue learning about Westward Expansion before
 the Civil War. Students will learn about Tecumseh and what he did for Native Americans 
in the early 1800’s, improvements in transportation, and the idea of Manifest Destiny.