August 24th-28th

Upcoming Events

Thursday, September 3rd ~ Lower School Curriculum Night at 6:00 pm

Tuesday, September 15th ~ Picture Day

Thursday, September 17th ~ Ironwoods Fifth Grade Field Trip*

Friday, September 18th ~ Family Fun Fest

*We previously had a field trip scheduled for Friday, September 4th to go to Heartland Presbyterian Center for team building activities, which was noted on the school calendar. We have decided to explore a new venue for this team building field trip this year, and we have adjusted the date and location accordingly. We will be going to the Ironwoods Challenge Course in Leawood, Kansas. We are very excited about this new opportunity! More information about this field trip will be provided soon.

Academics
In language arts we completed our first Wordly Wise lesson together.  This week, we completed all parts of the assignment in class.  Students took a test over the words on Friday and were assigned Parts A-D of lesson 2 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.  Next week, we will spend some time reviewing the traits of good writing in class in preparation for our first writing project, which is a personal narrative.   

In reading, students completed projects based on their summer reading novel, Holes.  Students had the opportunity to choose from a variety of different projects to complete. Students also took the Scholastic Reading Inventory, or SRI. SRI is designed to evaluate students' reading abilities, monitor students’ reading progress, and set goals for reading growth. Students will complete this assessment 3 three times throughout the school year to monitor growth and areas for improvement.  Next week, both classes will begin learning the seven reading comprehension strategies we will practice throughout the year and start our first class novel. 

In social studies, we first spent time getting acquainted with our class resources. We participated in a "textbook scavenger hunt" to learn about the different features of our new textbooks. We also spent time learning how to log in to the online textbook. Each student has a username and password taped into their planner so they are able to access this textbook from home. Finally, we started our first unit, which will focus on the geography of the United States as well as early Native American groups.

In science, we continued working on scientific process skills.  Students applied the knowledge they had learned about qualitative and quantitative observations to make observations of a variety of situations.  We also learned about metric forms of measurement and practiced measuring capacity, mass, and length using the metric system.  This week, students learned about science current events as well.  Each student signed up for a date to present their current event.  In groups, we completed a practice current event sheet, so students would feel confident completing this assignment.  Next week, we will continue learning about different scientific process skills.