November 30-December 4

Language Arts

Our focus skill this week will continue to be identifying text structure such as description, chronology, comparison, cause/effect, and problem/solution. We will spend more time practicing graphic organizers to help synthesize information and practice effective note-taking. As time allows, we may also research and write using various text structures. With read aloud each day, students are being taught to record various active reading strategies such as asking questions, summarizing, visualizing, connecting, predicting, etc. We are taking a break from book clubs, and students will be asked to keep a log of Active Reading Strategies along with their independent reading book.  I will collect the log on Friday. A MobyMax stories lesson is due by Friday as well.

Advanced Math – Students will be working on beginning their self-paced unit and will be going through decimals and this will be their first unit.  Students should not be coming home with a lot of homework unless they have chosen to work ahead or are not using their class time wisely. 

2^nd/3^rd Hour Math - Students are practicing adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions.  They are working on the different steps involved with each type of problem.  We will begin to look at how to divide fractions towards the end of the week-beginning of next week.

Science – This week in Science, we are beginning to talk about Cycles of Matter, the first cycle we are discussing is the water cycle and how water moves throughout the surface and the atmosphere. 

Achieve 3000 – Students are continuing to work on articles that explain how the environment or living things in the environment are impacted as humans change their habitats and what we can do to help them. 

Writing

Students will be working on stretching out the tension in their new narrative this week, focusing on and building up the tension to make readers want to read on.  We will also be thinking about what actions or images happened within the story that caused him/her to feel or think something. We will be sure to elaborate in these sections to record those exact actions or images to evoke the same emotions or thoughts in readers.

Social Studies

Our focus this week will be on the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies.  Our new standard asks that students understand the political, religious, social, and economic differences that evolved during the colonial era.  We will use map reading skills to gain information from an atlas of US History as well as other various online and textbook resources to gather information on each colonial region.

Last week, Resource Language Arts students performed a Thanksgiving Readers Theatre.  They enjoyed wearing headbands to go along with their character. We are back to the spelling and grammar work routine this week. 

In Resource Writing students are drafting a narrative about an insect this week.