October 21st - 23rd

Upcoming Events

Thursday, October 31st ~ All School Chapel, Halloween Class Parties at 2:30

Tuesday, November 5th - Wednesday, November 6th ~ Book Fair

Friday, November 8th ~ No School, Professional Development for Teachers

Friday, November 22nd ~ Spirit Day

Tuesday, November 26th ~ Thanksgiving Chapel

Wednesday, November 27th - Friday, November 29th ~ Thanksgiving Break, No School

Friday, November 29th ~ 50th Anniversary Alumni Party

Thursday, December 5th ~ 3rd-5th Grade Christmas Program at 7:00

Academics

In language arts, we finished our creative writing projects. We focused on peer editing and revising while looking for strong ideas and word choice. Mrs. Nash's class needs to have final copies ready to turn in on Monday, and Miss Laird's class will turn in their final copies on Wednesday. We will be starting our next grammar unit over nouns next week, and will also begin working in our WordMasters groups.

In reading, both classes continued to read the books they chose.
We are continuing to work on summarizing and picking out the story map elements.  Mrs. Nash's students reading Hatchet have read through chapter 8 of the novel, and students reading Running Out of Time have read through chapter 10. In Miss Laird's class the students read through Chapter 8 in Hatchet and chapter 6 of The Cay.

This week in social studies, we focused on how exploration began in Europe in Asia in the Middle Ages. We learned about Marco Polo and his travels to China, and we also learned about developments in navigation that led to further exploration. Next week, we will begin looking at the Spaniards arrival and settlement in the Americas. 

This week in science we worked on preparing students for the science expo. The students should have the first half of their lab report finished and ready to do their experiment. They need to have the experiment finished by November 11^th. Some students began learning about the life cycle of a star as they finished their lab reports. This coming week we will focus on the life cycle of stars and specifically the birth and death of stars.

Learning objectives for current units

Language Arts

Students will:

• Define and identify nouns and use them correctly in their writing. 
• Identify singular and plural nouns.
• Use irregular plural nouns correctly.
• Differentiate between common and proper nouns.
• Correctly capitalize words.
• Form and use singular possessive and plural possessive nouns.
• Improve sentence fluency by combining sentences with and or or. 
• Learn how to format both a business letter and a friendly letter. 
• Practice letter writing skills by writing business and friendly letters.

Reading

Students will:

• Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text.
• Compare and contrast stories in the same genre on their approaches to similar themes and topics.
• Determine the theme of a story from details in the text. 
• Identify story elements and pick out what's important from the text. 

Social Studies

Students will:

•  Give examples of how experiences may be interpreted differently by people from diverse cultural perspectives and frames of reference.
• Compare ways in which people from different cultures think about and deal with their physical environment and social conditions. 
• Recognize examples of cause and effect relationships.
• Compare and contrast different stories or accounts about past events, people, places, or situations.
•  Examine the interaction of human beings and their physical environment, the use of land, the building of cities, and ecosystem changes in selected regions.
• Identify and describe ways family, groups, and community influence the individual’s daily life and personal choices.
• Give examples of and explain group and institutional influences such as religious beliefs, laws, and peer pressure, on people, events, and elements of culture. 
• Identify and describe examples of tensions between and among individuals, groups, or institutions. 

Science
Students will:

• Understand that the motion of an object can be describes and measured. 
• Know that natural events are often predictable and logical. 
• Be able to identify structures ancient people built to show the importance of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars for their culture. 
• Know that natural events are often predictable and logical. 
• Be able describe the characteristics of stars, including the sun. 
• Know that in addition to the Sun, there are many more starts that are far away. 
• Know the orbit of the Earth is slightly elliptical and the Earth is closed to the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere in winter. 
• Understand the tilt of the earth on its own axis as it rotates and revolves around the Sun causes changes in seasons, length of day, and energy available.