Week of September 3-7

I hope you all enjoyed a terrific Labor Day weekend! We have a short, but busy week ahead of us.

Upcoming Tests
Wednesday: Geography Test-This will be over all of the material covered on the History Alive Tutorial. Students will also need to demonstrate an ability to identify and label the 4 major oceans (the Southern Ocean will be extra credit), the 7 continents, the equator, the prime meridian, and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. There are several websites under my blog links for practicing the continents and oceans or they may study using their social studies notebooks.

Technical Difficulties
If your child cannot access the Internet at home or has other technical difficulties related to homework, please let me know. I will do my best to accommodate them here at school.

Math Facts
Please encourage your child to practice his/her basic basic math facts, particularly multiplication. I'm noticing it's common for the kiddos to miss a few factors when looking for all the factors of a number. Knowing basic math facts is so helpful in 5th grade!

Here's what we'll be learning about this week...
Math: In math we will begin to explore the order of operations with a focus on how to use parentheses, brackets, and braces when solving equations.
Social Studies: This week we will review what we've learned about geography so far and complete a test and a transfer task. On Friday, we will begin learning about the different geographical regions of the United States and what makes them unique.
Word Study: As part of our English Language Arts unit about playing with words, we will learn about figurative language, why authors use it, and we will practice using it in our own writing.
Writing: The focus this week will be on the 6 traits of writing and how good writers use these traits to communicate effectively.
Reading: We will l learn how to use the thinking strategy of determining importance to take notes. Then the kids will gather research on historic people for a BioPoem they will be writing about a historic person next week!