April 18th - May 2nd

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, May 7th ~ Middle School Book Fair for 5th-8th Grades

Friday, May 9th ~ Mercado Day at 2:00 (Please see the note from Senora Meli)*** & Social Studies Enrichment celebration at 7:15 am 

Friday, May 16th ~ Spirit Day

Tuesday, May 20th ~ Field Day 3rd- 8th grade

Thursday, May 22nd ~ Last Day of School, 3rd-5th grade to Southmoreland Park

Friday, May 23rd ~ 8th grade graduation

  

*** Mercado Day***

On May 9 at 2:00, students in fifth grade will celebrate Mercado day.  Students were  assigned a Spanish-speaking country and have been researching facts about it to share with you.  Your child has a script to memorize for that day. This script was written in class and I have checked it for accuracy.  I am also making an audio file so students will know how to pronounce the words.  Over the weekend,  I will make the audio files and email them to your child.  Please, help him/her practice his/her presentation daily so the script will be memorized by the 9^th. That day, students will have an iPad with a Thinglink display  that will guide their presentation.

Students will also be “selling” an item representative of their country during the second part of the market day.  These items are to be done completely at home. There is no need to spend too much money on them. Examples of products are:

·         bookmarks with the colors of the flag or with pictures of the country, the name of the country written in fancy letters.

·         figurines made of clay

·         bracelets

·         homemade piñatas or rain sticks

·         masks

·         paper flowers

  I am asking students to bring about 20 items to sell. There are only 2 students per class who have a food or drink “permit.”

Parents are invited to come to the North MPR at 2:00 and tour the presentations. At about 2:30, parents will be given 20 pesos to purchase items in the market.  These pesos were designed by the students, too.

Students are working hard on their presentations and we are all looking forward to this fun activity!

Here are some phrases that parents can use to make the experience more authentic:

¿Qué es ésto? – What is this?

¿Cuánto cuesta? – How much does it cost?

¡Muy bien! – Very good!

¡Qué barato! – How cheap!

¡Qué caro! – How expensive!

¡Delicioso! – Delicious!

Sra. Meli

Academics

In language arts,  we finished our explanatory writing projects and started our final grammar unit of the year. This grammar unit will cover pronouns, prepositions, and adverbs. As always, students can use our LiveBinder for Grammar to help them review this material if they need extra practice at home. We also resumed Wordly Wise this week. Students completed practice 18 and took a test over the words on Friday. They may begin Wordly Wise 19, which will be due Thursday, May 8th.

Both reading classes have been working on their book contracts. Miss Laird's students have finished week  one of the book contract reading schedule and will be expected to turn in the first week of journals at the beginning of next week. Each group in Mrs. Nash's class is about halfway though their books. Students are responsible for having journal entries three through six complete on Monday. The final project for both classes is due May 21^st.

This week in social studies, students completed their unit five projects and began sharing them with their classmates. The innovation and creativity used to put together these projects is quite impressive! We will finish sharing these projects at the beginning of next week and then begin our final unit of the year over the Civil War. Several students have signed up to participate in the enrichment opportunity next Friday, May 9th from 7:15-8:00 am. I look forward to seeing what they have put together!

In science, we are began focusing on the life of plants. We began by discussing and learning the process photosynthesis. Then we learned about the purpose and function of stems and roots. We ended the week with an experiment manipulating the position of a newly planted bean seed and we will chart the growth over the next couple of weeks. 

Below are some pictures from last week's field trip to Exchange City and our Earth Day activity last Friday! We apologize for the delay in sharing them with you!