I hope you remembered to set your clocks back this weekend . . . and enjoyed that extra hour to sleep or spend with family and friends.

Wednesday-Friday this week are early-out days to allow for parent-teacher conferences. I am looking forward to spending a few minutes to discuss your child's progress in class. Report cards will go home on Tuesday to allow you time to review them before we meet on either Wednesday or Thursday.

Looking ahead ~ Picture retakes are scheduled for Thursday November 14th.
The Barnes & Noble Poly Drive Book Fair will take place on Sunday November 24th - more information will follow shortly.

As you head down the hall for our conference, take a look at the wall outside our room. Each child chose a positive "Word of the Year". This is a word that holds significance for your child and he or she wrote a short essay explaining why that particular word was chosen ~ and what it means to them.

Spelling ~ Unit 8 Pretest on Monday. We will work with our words throughout the week and then take a final test on Friday.
Language ~
5th: Comparative and Superlative Adjectives
6th: Irregular Plural Nouns
Reading ~ The 6th graders are reading the novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins. We will work with various comprehension strategies throughout. The 5th graders are working in our Daybook resource. We will work with drawing personal meaning from our reading, main idea and author's purpose, and writing brief summaries.
Math ~ Both grades continue to work on the Khan Academy site. I have made recommendations to each of the kids and you will notice some easier, basic skill work. These are all focus concepts for each grade level and I want to make sure that the kids have ongoing practice in these areas throughout the year. My goal for the year is concept mastery for each child.
5th: We will continue multiplying multi-digit numbers and decimals this week. The kids will work with partners to solve higher-level thinking tasks and will play a strategy game to build the largest product.
6th: We will work with exponents and the order of operations this week. Much of the work this week will include partner activities where the kids will need to justify and explain their thinking and processes.
Social Studies ~ 6th: The kids are working with a small group to research and create a presentation about one of the four empires of ancient Mesopotamia. They will have three class periods to complete this project and it appears that all groups have chosen to create a PowerPoint presentation. With our D2 apps, the kids can use their school district email accounts to collaboratively create and edit using Google Drive. If you are not familiar with this technology, ask your child to show you.
Science ~ 6th: The kids finished their periodic table element research and did a great job on their element tiles. We are delving deeper into chemistry and will read about compounds, take a few notes, and complete an investigation review on Tuesday.

I'll see you at conferences!  :)