Another Busy Week

This week will be a busy week for us, the week of 2-27-12.  In addition to the learning listed below, we will be attending Pershing West's first Black History Bowl on Monday morning at 9:00 am.  Please feel free to join us.  On Thursday, the boys will listen to a special guest speaker and the girls watch a movie called Finding Kind and discuss bullying.  Don't forget that there is a day off next Monday and the following Tuesday we begin ISATs!

In word work, students will work with the words lecture, assert, declare, elaborate, expression, insist, acoustics, converse, accentuate, and petition.


In literature study, students will practice using details from Mississippi Trial 1955 to make inferences. When we infer we use background knowledge with clues in the text to come up with our own ideas about what the author is trying to present.

In writing workshop, we will practice mindful thinking this week and concentrate on mindful seeing with two different Mind-Up activities. Then, we will start a unit on persuasive writing by discussing some topics that students will be asked to talk a side on. In the final activity of the week, students will have to convince a classmate that their type of food is better than the other’s by making claims and evidence about their food.

This week in math students will learn how to write the same number as a fraction, decimal, and percent. Students will learn that finding a percent of a whole number is like finding part of a whole. They will learn how to display data in a table and extend a pattern to find percents. Students will answer questions about a recipe to review ratios, percents, fractions, and decimals.

This week in science, students will create their own experiment with a lever, changing out the independent variable and keeping the dependent and the controlled variables the same as our past lever experiments. They will write up the experiment and present the results to their classmates. Students will also be taking a levers test.

ISAT is Almost Here!

ISAT is right around this corner.  You'll notice that this week we will be incorporating some test preparation into our usual learning.  We'll be diving deeper into writing extended responses in reading and in math.  Read more details for the week of 2-20-12 below:

In Word Work, students will work with the words claim, analogy, intonation, dialogue, monotone, exclaim, disclaim, prologue, baritone, and proclaim. We will work on using the context for meaning, as well as using prefixes and root words.


In literature study, we will learn about character motivation: what makes a character do something? We will distinguish between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. We will continue to read Mississippi Trial 1955 and discuss why certain characters make the choices they make.

In writing workshop, we will do some Mind-up Activities to practice mindful listening and mindful smelling. We will also practice timed essay writing to get students ready for writing their extended response essays for ISAT under a time limit. Students will learn how to quickly plan a hook, thesis, and reasons.

This week, students will work on various math skills while practicing how to write an extended response. We will start the week by reviewing a response students wrote last week. They will review their grades as well as some sample answers. On Tuesday, we will look at a different problem and review sample answer that have been graded by ISAT and see the official scores that were given. Some of the skills we will review this week will include measurement, fractions, algebra, perimeter, and area.

This week in science, students will learn about dependent, independent, and controlled variables. They will analyze several different experiments and determine the types of variables in each experiment.

Mississippi Trial 1955

       This week we will start reading Mississippi Trial 1955 by Chris Crowe.  It is important to understand that this is a novel based on the murder of Emmett Till. There are some strong scenes in the book based on what happened in the past. There is also some strong language in parts. It is a well written book that teaches about important historical events. This novel addresses themes such as prejudice, family reconciliation, and seeing things through new eyes. Please feel free to read the book along with your child and discuss these valuable themes with them.   Below is a summary of the book:

       "Sixteen-year-old Hiram hasn't been to his beloved town of Greenwood, Mississippi since he was a small child. He used to live there with his grandfather before his father uprooted him from his home to live in Arizona. But when he comes back, things aren't exactly the way Hiram remembers them to be. He crosses paths with Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy from Chicago.

      A few nights later, R.C., an old "friend" of Hiram's pays him a visit to tell him about Emmett Till whistling at a white woman in public and how he needs to be "taught a lesson." Hiram is worried for Emmett, but then, the boy goes missing and a few days later, his body is found in the river. Two of the four murderers are caught and put on trial (three men and one woman picked Emmett up the night of his murder) and Hiram has a strong suspicion that R.C. was the third male killer.

      During the trial, the two murderers aren't seen as guilty, but Hiram still struggles with whether to turn R.C. into the authorities or not because of his suspicion. He is determined to find out who the others are who murdered Emmett, but when he finds out exactly who it was who killed the boy, it makes him think twice about how 'beloved' Greenwood really is. "

Here's a summary of our weekly learning for the week of 2-13-12:
In Word Work, students will start working on words that deal with the theme of communication. The words this week are acclaim, monologue, quip, humorist, impersonator, conversational, drawl, ridicule, spontaneous, and pronouncement.


In literature study, students will start the week with some background knowledge of the book we will be reading, Mississippi Trial 1955 by Chris Crowe. We will review some historical events between1955-1968. We will map out some of the place that make up the setting of the book. As we begin to read the book we will work on understanding the text by answering and discussing questions about the characters and events.

In writing workshop, students will share their realistic fictions stories with their classmates. As they are listening, students will have to identify the main problem in each story and write it down for a listening grade. Finally, we will do some Mind-up Activities to practice mindful listening and mindful smelling.

This week in math, students will add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators, and add mixed numbers. Students will write percents and read, write and generate equal ratios.

This week in science, students will identify levers that we use in everyday life such as brooms, nutcrackers, scissors, bottle openers, pliers, tweezers, hammers, and even the human arm. They will decide if they are class-1, class-2, or class-3 levers.

A Full Week of Learning

Finally, a full five day week!  Here's what we will be working on the week of 2-6-12:

In Word Work, students will continue to review all of the words in Unit 3. We will classify the words by prefixes. We will turn some of the words into adverbs and act them out. We will find opposites of the words. Then, we will take the Unit 3 post-test. In literature study, students will learn about poetic devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, rhyme, and onomatopoeia. Students will learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen and they will write a new poem using rhyming couplets and the aforementioned poetic devices. In writing workshop, students will work on crafting the final drafts of their fiction stories, while putting them into a book with illustrations.

This week in math, students will add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators, and add mixed numbers. We will spend a day doing problem solving to help students apply what they have learned about fractions.

This week in science, students will learn the difference between class 1, 2, and 3 levers. They will learn the acronym "FLE 123" (pronounced flee) to remember that class 1 levers have the fulcrum in the middle, class 2 levers have the load in the middle, and class 3 levers have the effort in the middle. Try asking your kids to explain this acronym to you at the end of the week. We will also be doing an experiment to see if it is easier to move the load in a class 1 lever if the load is closer to or farther from the fulcrum.