Ask your children what they know about Dr. Martin Luther King......   (and about Haiti)....

Next month is Black History Month.  Your child will have a project to do.  They will choose a person to write a biography on.  I will be sending home some rubrics and guidelines to help your child get started.  They will write a report-5 paragraphs long (using the rubric and guidelines as  their guide).  They will then create a film strip of scenes from their person's life.  I have worksheets, a rubric and a check list-I will send all this home by Thursday.  In the meantime, each student will need a shoebox, cereal box, etc.-some kind of box-to pull their filmstrip through.  If you have a box or two, please send them in.  They might end up decorating the box at home, but they will get it started in school.  I would like to have these boxes by Monday at the latest-thanks.   The entire project will be due February 8th-Monday.

I hope you heard about the Humanology Mobile that your child saw last week-ask them what they did and what they learned!

Language Arts:  Again, we are reading short stories, answering questions and reviewing our answers to see where we need to improve.    Your child will be reading in their AR book, writing in their Journal and also writing in their Writer's Notebook throughout the week.  Ask your child about Synonyms and Antonyms.  Play around with examples.

This week's writing will focus around writing an Extended Response: using their reading and critical-thinking skills to develop an in-depth response in writing to a passage they have read.  In answering an Extended Response, students should:  (your child will have a sheet with them today titled:  How to answer ISAT questions-please keep and review with them.)  In summary:  The question needs to be answered-Does their opening sentence answer the question-we talk about using  fun, interesting, getting the readers attention first statements.  They should then pull three (at least 2) details out of the text to support the answer.  Then in a new paragraph, your child needs to make a self connection -example...This reminds me of....  (or)  Once when I....    The instructors of the ISAT's are telling us that the information that your child writes about from the text and their own self-connection should be about the same in length.  These two parts of the writing should be balanced.  (This is different from last year.)  Then they should have a conclusion:  This can be stated as  ... In conclusion....  Or I am showing the students how to re-state the beginning statement to reinforce their  response.  Again, I will be sending home some worksheets that will help for you to review with your child.

Homework:  Wednesday - Lesson 9 in the ISAT book-due Thursday.   Three cursive sheets will be sent home today-due Friday.  Reading at least 30 minutes per night.

Math:  Lessons  5.10-5.12 will be completed.  The unit 5 test will be next Tuesday.  We will review on Monday.

Homework:  Lessons 5.10.5.12 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  In addition ISAT Lesson 8 tonight (multiplication) and Lesson 10 on Thursday (estimation).  Both lessons are due the day after assigned.  Thanks for your help.

Social Studies:  We will continue to work in our Time Magazines to continue to learn about the world we live in.

Art:  WE will do the Monogram lesson this week-last week we have the Learning First Tests and we did not get to this.  But, did your child tell you about the Mirror we worked with (math/art)  We made mirror images.  What does this mean?  Can your child tell you about mirror images, slides, flips, rotations (25. 50. 75 degree turns/rotations)?