Dear Parents,

Before I forget- <strong>Progress Reports</strong> will be sent home on Wednesday.  Remind your students that school is not over, please.

Thank you to Ms. Abernathy, Ms. Cole, and Mr. Robinson for your participation in last week’s walking field trip to the smART museum.    It was a great help to the museum docents (and to me) to have parental support.  This week, we have two separate field trips:

On Tuesday, we will go to the Hyde   Park Art museum, where students will create self-portraits.  The field trip is scheduled for 10-11:30  am.  On Thursday, when we head back to the smART museum, we will leave around 1 pm again from the cafeteria.

Also, do not forget about the evening reception at the museum for the students on June 1 from 6-8  pm at the Smart Museum.  Please mark the event in your calendar.  You may contact me at <a href="mailto:agkrecik@cps.edu">agkrecik@cps.edu</a> if you have any additional questions.

<strong>Reading</strong><strong>: </strong>We will continue a shared novel, <span style="text-decoration: underline">The Witch Of Blackbird Pond.</span> Students will refine their reading comprehension skills that we have been focusing on all year.  These include:  prediction, summarizing, visualizing, inferencing, and drawing conclusions.  In addition, students will read fiction books to refine their skills in guided reading groups.<strong></strong>

<strong>Writing: </strong><strong>Student Poetry Booklets are due Monday, May 17.  Now,   we will focus on the elements of poetry this week.   Students will analyze other poets’ work and write more authentic poetry.We will practice Poetry Performance techniques, and students will prepare poems to perform.  Stay tuned for the date and time announcement for Room 304’s Poetry Slam.</strong>

<strong>Math:</strong> This week students will continue lessons from Unit 8.  Specifically, students will review subtracting of mixed numbers and multiplying fractions.  We will cover lessons 8.3, and 8.5, and 8.6.  Students will take a Checking progress quiz on Thursday.

<strong>Science: </strong>This week we will continue to investigate Levers and Pulleys.  Students will construct a class-1 lever and perform multiple trials for different experiments.  Students will identify the fulcrum and lever arm, and students will determine the best position of each through trials and observation.

<strong>Social Studies:</strong><strong> Students will take the Chapter 11 test on Monday. </strong><strong>We will begin taking notes on Chapter 12 this week.  Chapter 12 is titled, "The Constitution".  Students will define vocabulary and respond to focus questions as homework. </strong>

<strong>Spelling: </strong>We will continue spelling practice this week.  Please study with your child the spelling words.  The spelling test will be Friday.<strong></strong>