Dear Parents,

Thank you to Ms. Faulkner and Ms. Anderson 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 Thursday, we will leave around 1 pm again from the cafeteria.  Also, so that you may prepare for the culminating event, we will have an evening reception at the museum for the students on June 1 from 6-8  pm at the Smart Museum.  This final celebratory event will be an opportunity for students to give their presentations.  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 complete our nonfiction unit of study, “Nutritional Knowledge” this week.  Students will complete their guided reading groups this week that have also focused on health and nutrition.  Students will take a short assessment of their learning on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, we will begin 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.<strong></strong>

<strong>Writing: </strong><strong>Students will begin assembling their poetry books this week.  Time will be given to type out poems for books in computer lab.  Students may also   hand-write neatly poetry.  One drawing or illustration should accompany poems.  I encourage students to do a mixture of typed/handwritten/drawing/clip art to add to the creativity of their booklets.  Student Poetry Books should be completed and assembled at home.  I have extended the due date:  Booklets are due May 17.</strong><strong> We will begin to look at the elements of all poetry this week, and students will analyze other poets’ work and write more authentic poetry.  Finally, we will define what a Poetry Slam is, as we prepare for next week’s performance poetry lessons.</strong>

<strong>Math:</strong> This week students will begin lessons from Unit 8.  Specifically, students will review adding mixed numbers and practice subtracting of mixed numbers, using calculators to solve fractions, and multiplying fractions.  We will cover lessons 8.3, and 8.4, and 8.5.  Students will take a Checking progress quiz on Thursday.

<strong>Science: </strong>This week we will investigate Levers and Pulleys.  Students will construct a class-1 lever.  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>We will finish taking notes on Chapter 11 this week.  Students will define vocabulary and respond to focus questions as homework.  Students will review for Chapter test.  In addition, students will create three test questions for Chapter 11.  Their test question may be used in the chapter test that will be given May 17.</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>