Our week in learning 3/27

 The AZMerit is coming up soon, and this Monday students will have the 
opportunity to take a practice AZMerit writing exam. The first AZMerit 
writing exam takes place on Friday, April 6. Please make sure your
student has headphones/earbuds to take the AZMerit tests.

Math tutoring will commence after school this week. Tutoring will take place
on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:05-3:40. All students are welcome to
attend for extra math practice. The data analysis unit quiz will be this
upcoming Thursday.

This week in science, students will finish learning about bones, joints, and 
vertebrae. They will take a skeletal system anatomy quiz on Wednesday. 
They will be expected to know the location of each of the bones we have 
studied. On Thursday, students will begin learning about the muscular system.

This week, students will continue to practice using transition words to connect 

ideas and stretching simple sentences into longer ones using relevant details. 

Please help coach your students as they compose their practice sentences at 

home! On Monday, students will take the practice AZ Merit writing test to 

familiarize themselves with the AZ Merit’s tools and format.

In literature, students will continue reading through chapters 2-3 in Across Five Aprils.

This week in history, students will continue learning about the Civil War. Students 
will be learning about the Emancipation Proclamation, General Lee, General Grant,
 and the draft. Please note that when students have a summary paragraph for 
homework, that should serve as their notes for that chapter.  


In math this week, we will start our unit on data analysis. Students will work with 
pie charts using fractions and percentages. We will take the unit test on Thursday,
 then transition into AZMerit practice until we take our tests on 4/17 and 4/19. We 
will have math groups this week on Wednesday 8:00-9:15.

 

Our week in learning 3/20

Welcome to the fourth quarter! This quarter, students will be busy preparing for
 the AZMerit, polishing their writing, and focusing on precise note-taking. Also this
 week, our new assistant teacher, Mrs. LaVell, will join us for the rest of the year!

This week in science, students will begin their anatomy unit by learning about the
 skeletal system. Students will label the different bones of the human body, be able 
to locate them on themselves, and will take notes on their different functions.

In math this week, we will start our unit on data analysis. Students will identify 
mean, median and mode, and interpret histograms, line graphs, and pie charts. 
We will also begin our formal test prep for the AZMerit by working through targeted 
packets for bellwork. We will go over the bellwork at the start of each day. As we 
get closer to the test, we will transition to more test prep during the school day. 
Because we are starting a new unit today, there will be no math groups this week. 
We will start back up with math groups on 3/28.   


This week in history, students will continue learning about the Civil War. Students 
will be learning about the beginning of the Civil War, Fort Sumter, advantages and 
disadvantages of the North and South, military strategies, the reason why it was 
called a “Brother’s War”, the Peninsular Campaign, the battle of Antietam, and 
General McClellan. Please note that when students have a summary paragraph 
for homework, that should serve as their notes for that chapter. 

This week in Language Arts, students will review transition words and practice 

using appropriate transitions in their writing. They will also begin sentence stretching

 exercises to add details to their writing by answering the questions: Who? What? 

When? Where? Why? And How? Finally, students will complete a writing workshop 

on Friday, spending the majority of the morning composing a full five-paragraph essay

 from beginning to end. Students will meet with a teacher briefly to help coach them in their writing skills.

In literature, please send in Across Five Aprils--students will begin their new 
literature selection this week!

Our week in learning 3/5

The last week of the quarter is here, and it is looking to be a busy one! This week,
students will take a math quiz and a math test; recite "I Hear America Singing"; take
a cumulative roots test; write an essay about a character in The Secret Garden; act out
a play about George Washington Carver's life; and, of course, attend a field trip to the
 Renaissance Festival!

In science this week, students will read about the life of inventor George Washington 
Carver, who found hundreds of uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes. Thursday and 
Friday will be spent rehearsing and performing a short play centering around 
Mr. Carver’s life. Each student will have the opportunity to act in one scene of the 
play in front of the rest of the class.

This week in history, students will continue learning about the Civil War. Students 
will be learning about the Abraham Lincoln, the Underground Railroad, and the start 
of the Civil War. On Wednesday, we will watch a short History Channel video on 
John Brown that does contain some violent content. 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 on Thursday 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. Students can be sure that only material 
from the foldables will be used on the short quiz.  


In math this week, we will finish their unit on percentages. We will practice finding 
a percentage of a whole and word problems. We will take a short math test over 
this material on Friday.  There will be no math groups for the rest of the quarter. 
We will begin with math groups again in quarter 4.