Week of 10/19/09 - 10/23/09

Highlights for the week of 10/19/09 - 10/23/09 in Mrs. Bell's Classroom

Spelling - Lesson 8 - Review

The final test for this week's list will be on Friday, 10/23. There will be no "Words to Know" this week. The format for this week's test will be different, because it is a review lesson. Students will be given lists of spelling words, some of which contain a misspelled word. They will have to determine which word is not spelled correctly, or if all of the words are correct. I recommend studying the spelling rules from each lesson to prepare for this test.

Reading - Summarizing / Visualization
We will begin our week in reading with an introduction to writing extended responses. Writing an extended response is a skill that is assessed on the ISAT test in the spring. I will introduce the concepts of using a key idea, providing evidence, interpreting the evidence, and extending the ideas. We will practice writing a response together using the story, 'The Three Little Pigs." Students will independently write their own responses to The Wishgiver on Wednesday. On Thursday, we will begin a new reading comprehension strategy: "Visualization". Being able to create mental pictures while reading is beneficial to comprehension. Students will practice this skill while focusing on the genre of tall tales. We will begin with the study of the story of "Bess Call".

"Bite Into a Good Book" program
We have been enjoying the book talks given by students. They should be at least half way to their reading goal by now!

English - Capitalization & Punctuation

The Comic Strip Quotation project will be due on Tuesday. Then, students will be collecting quotations for our "Me Front Page" newspaper, and typing them. Abbreviations and titles are the other topics that will be looked at.

Social Studies

We will be moving on to the study of the first 13 colonies. We will focus on the geography, resources, and industry of each region settled by the English.

Science - Energy & Ecosystems

We will have an OPEN NOTE ASSESSMENT on Tuesday, 10/20. The assessment will cover chapter 5, lesson 1. Students should be familiar with their notes & should have them safely stored in the science folder of their binders! Your child should be collecting leaves for the animal leaf project. An information packet on preserving the leaves was sent home on 10/15. Leaves should come to school on 10/22 in a "ziplock" bag.

Mrs. Bell's Math Class

We will continue our study of decimals with a look at multiplication of decimals, division of decimals by whole numbers & decimals. The second QUIZ for chapter 3 is TENTATIVELY scheduled for Friday, 10/23.

FYI...

For the next five weeks, our class will be participating in the Junior Achievement program. The goal of the program is to introduce students to basic concepts of business.

Don't forget...early dismissal on Wednesday, 10/21. Students will be dismissed at 11:00.

Mrs. Karen Bell