Please use your Kroger cards. They're a one of the best resources for our
class. If you don't have a Kroger card you can get one from the PTO.
Ms. Phillips’s Homework Note
Feb. 1, 2010.
I hope you were all able to stay warm during the snow day. Mid 9 week grades
go out this week. Please look over these reports closely with your
children. Some of the grades are low on this report. Of course the time
we’ve missed since Christmas plays a role in that. We’ve actually only been
in school about 2 and a half weeks since Christmas so it’s not a true
representation of a half a grading period. My concern is that many of your
children haven’t been turning in work consistently and very few students have
been correcting assignments. Anytime a paper is below an 80 I encourage your
child to correct that paper for a better grade. There is no reason to have a
low grade on the report when any low daily grade could have been corrected.
Please talk to your children about correcting their work when they make
mistakes. This is an important part of the learning process and a great way
for you to help them at home.
Our spelling words this week have suffixes. If you haven’t visited the
spelling city web site, please do. It’s a great way to study for the tests.
Our reading selection this week is America’s Champion Swimmer: Gertrude
Ederle by David Adler. Students will take the selection test from last
weeks story Monday. Tuesday we will spend part of our reading class taking a
writing assessment. Tuesday is the date for the state writing assessment for
5th grade and West has decided to take a writing assessment school wide at
that time. The family times workbook page will go home Monday for you to
study the vocabulary words for Friday’s selection test. I will also probably
send home a vocabulary worksheet for homework one day this week. My reading
class goes to the computer lab most Tuesdays and Thursdays to use a program
called Academy of Reading. It’s a good program to improve reading skills.
At that time students can also take Accelerated Reading tests from their
library books. Please encourage your children to read the library books and
take the AR tests. There are positive rewards available here at school for
earning AR points through passing these tests.
My math class is wrapping up our chapter on probability. We are starting a
new unit on multiplication and division.
We did not get a chance due to the snow day to talk about Famous
Entrepreneurs in Social Studies. We will do that Monday. Later in the week
we will talk about trading goods and take a test over chapter 6 on economic
systems and principles.
In science we will briefly discuss fossils and living extinct species and
then move into a unit on the solar system starting with our planet the sun
and our moon.
In English we will begin a unit on pronouns. This week students will
identify the pronoun in sentences and identify them as subjects and objects.