August 18th-22nd

Below is some information about upcoming events as well as highlights from each class. 

Upcoming Events

Thursday, August 29th ~ Lower School Curriculum Night

Friday, August 30th ~ Heartland Field trip from 9:00-2:30, Wordly Wise 2 Test

Monday, September 1st ~ No School, Labor Day

Friday, September 5th ~ Family Fun Fest

Tuesday, September 16th ~ School Pictures

Friday, September 26th ~ Feed the Need Friday

Academics

In language arts, we worked on our first Wordly Wise lesson together in class. Students took a test over the words on Friday, and were assigned Parts A-D of lesson two to complete on their own for next week. We will complete Part E together in class together. Wordly Wise lessons are always due on Thursdays, and we will take our spelling tests on Fridays. We also spent some time reviewing the traits of good writing in class. Students had an opportunity to evaluate several pieces of writing for their use of ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions. We will use all of these traits in our writing throughout the year. Next week, we will begin our first writing project, which is a personal narrative.  

In both Miss Laird's and Mrs. Nash's reading classes, we started learning about seven comprehension strategies that we will use throughout the year. Students made bookmarks of these strategies so they can refer to them with each reading unit. Miss Laird's class then discussed plot mapping. The students learned the five sequenced events in plot and practiced identifying these events with a short story. Her class will begin Running Out of Time on Monday. Mrs. Nash's class began reading The Watson's Go to Birmingham this week. As we started chapter one, students practiced each of the seven reading strategies as they read. 

In social studies, we shared posters students created in groups focusing on either "America" or "History." We then completed a textbook scavenger hunt so students could become familiar with the features of our text. Additionally, we explored the online textbook. Each student has a piece of paper in their trapper with instructions on how to access the online textbook, as well as use other online features, such as games and quizzes, to help them study for unit tests. Finally, we started our unit on Native Americans by examining the first groups to settle in North and South America. 

In science, we began discussing the process skills for the scientific method. As we continue the students will participate in a mini lab related to each skill as we prepare to conduct several experiments throughout the first quarter. Students were also given their current event assignment for first quarter. Each week 3-4 students will present their current events to the class.