Curriculum Update February 27-March 2

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and relaxing weekend. This week, we will begin our Kansas Reading State Assessments. They will take place Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 12:00-1:30 (or longer if anyone needs extra time). Please make sure your child receives a good night sleep. There will be NO homework until Thursday evening.

Thank you for sending in a white t-shirt. The kids were excited to decorate their "team jersey" for our annual KSA Super Bowl. GO Super Pandas!

Please consider sending in non-perishable items for the 5th grade food drive for St. Mary's food kitchen this week. Thank you in advance.

Rigby Reading
Last week, we went over character traits, compare & contrast, predicting, main idea, retelling, summarizing, prefixes/suffixes, author's purpose, text features and cause & effect. The kids created a collage from a variety of Scholastic News demonstrating they understood each skill.

On Monday, we will have the KSA Literacy Super Bowl, a fun way to review for the state assessment through hands-on kinesthetic learning games. Due to state testing, Rigby Reading will resume on Monday, March 5.

enVision Math
We completed Topic 8, division last week. This week, we will begin Topic 15, focusing on liquid volume and mass. We will cover customary units of capacity, metric units of capacity, units of mass and units of weight this week. Tuesday and Wednesday, we will do the homework sheets in class.

Spelling
There will be NO spelling this week due to the reading state assessments. It will resume on Monday, March 5, 2012.

Social Studies
We will begin a unit on economics. All year, we have been learning about economics through our Team Leggett economy, but will continue to learn more in the next couple of weeks. We will focus on wants vs needs, credit, opportunity cost, scarcity, bartering, saving and creating a business.

Science
We will begin a unit on sound. The students will learn how pitch and vibrations effect sound.

Writing
We will begin our published books this week. The students will create an autobiography. Please remember, I am sending all published books to Ethiopia Reads, a program that sends books to Ethiopia to fill their libraries.

Thanks and have a fantastic week! :)