Upcoming Events
Friday, August 30th ~ Spirit Day, Eucharist Chapel
Monday, September 2nd ~ No School, Labor Day
Thursday, September 5th ~ Lower School Curriculum Night at 6 pm*
Friday, September 13th ~ Author Patricia Pollocko visits Second-Fifth Grade from 1-2 pm
Tuesday, September 17th ~ School Pictures
Thursday, September 19th ~ Field Trip to Heartland Presbyterian Center
Friday, September 20th ~ Family Fun Fest
Friday, September 27th ~ Spirit Day and Pet Blessing
*We hope you are able to join us for Lower School Curriculum Night. Fifth grade will meet on the third floor in the commons for the presentation.
Academics
In language arts,
we completed our first set of spelling and vocabulary words by completing the first round of Wordly Wise online. We completed all this work in class which we will also do next week. After that, students will be asked to complete most of the online practice at home. Students also took their first Wordly Wise test on Friday. In addition to working on wordly wise, students began exploring the qualities of good writing. We will use the Six Traits of Writing as our foundation for all of our writing projects, so students were introduced to the first two traits. We will focus on the remaining four traits next week and will begin our first writing assignment.
Both reading classes focused on the seven reading comprehension strategies we will utilize this year. Students analyzed each trait and developed a bookmark with each of these traits that they will use throughout the year. Miss Laird's class also completed an activity prepare reading Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Mrs. Nash's class completed a pre-reading activity for Holes by Louis Sachar and set up a reading response journal they will use throughout the novel. Both classes will begin their novels on Monday.
In social studies, students learned about how to access the online textbook. Students have a pink paper in their trapper that gives specific instructions for logging on to the textbook from home. We also became more familiar with our book by completing a textbook scavenger hunt, and we began our first unit about Native Americans. Next week we will explore Native Americans from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest as well as Native Americans from the Southwest.
This
week in science we started to look at each step of the scientific method
in more depth. We will continue to do so next week. We are preparing to test an already developed idea and
hypothesis as well as working towards developing an original idea and
hypothesis.
Learning Objectives for our Current Units
Language Arts
- Students will identify the six traits of writing and evaluate various writing pieces based on these traits.
- Students will write narratives to develop real experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
- Students will spell grade-appropriate words correctly and will determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words.
Reading
- Students will compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details from the text.
- Students will describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.
- Students will determine a theme of a story from details in the text, including how characters in a story respond to challenges.
- Students will determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.
Social Studies
- Students will trace the development of the first North American cultures.
- Students will explain how Native Americans adapted to varied environments.
- Students will identify ways Native Americans used natural resources.
- Students will understand how Native American groups governed themselves.
Science
- Students will be able to determine or give examples of variables in within an experiment. (3)
- Students will be able to understand the difference and relationship of observing, inferring, and hypothesizing.
- Students will be able to write a hypothesis using two variables.
- Students will be able to explain the importance of variables in a hypothesis.
- Students will be able to identify independent, controlled, and dependent variables. (1)
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