April 28th ~ May 2nd

As I typed "May 2nd", the reality of how quickly this year is passing hit me hard. Your kids are an inspiration to me every day and it will be very hard to see this year come to an end. The good news for me . . . we still have 6 weeks together! We will work very diligently over the few weeks remaining to make sure that your child has the skills that he or she needs to move onto 6th grade or middle school.

There is no school this Friday, so enjoy another 3-day weekend!

Spelling ~ We will work with Unit 32 words this week - taking a pretest on Monday, having written assignments on Tuesday and Wednesday, and taking a final test on Thursday.
5th: Suffixes -ent, -ant, -able, -ible
6th: Greek word parts
Language ~ Both grades will work with the Latin root words miss/mitt and sect.
5th: Homophones & Homographs
6th: Latin prefixes and roots
Reading ~
Both grades will wrap up novels this week. The 5th graders have been reading Woods Runner and the 6th graders have been reading The Westing Game.
We are doing a bit of research on the Civil Rights Movement as we prepare to begin the novel, The Watson's Go To Birmingham-1963 as a class.
Math ~
5th: The kids will be working with expressions and equations, as well as the order of operations.
6th: We are finishing our study of statistics and graphing this week.
Writing ~
6th graders will complete their personal narratives.
Social Studies ~
6th grade will study the Shang Dynasty of ancient China and will work on an interactive activity in class.
Science ~
6th graders will learn about the pull of gravity and perform hands-on experiments related to mass and gravity.

There will be no Extended Studies this week due to Mrs. Watterson's testing schedule. ES will resume next week.

This week will be bittersweet ~ it is great to see Mr. Monson complete this milestone, but we will sure miss him. He will be an excellent teacher and I sure hope that SD2 sets him up in a classroom of his own next year. Best of luck to you Mr. Monson!

Have a great week!