Friday, April 14, 2017

April 14th News

Information and Announcements
  • Sunday, April 16: Easter
  • Monday, April 17: No School
  • Friday, April 21: Civic Center Field Trip


Religion:

This week in religion the students finished the 4th unit. For this 66 point unit project students are working on twitter pages for three of the Old Testament figures that we studied. This is a fun way for the students to demonstrate their knowledge. Next week we will begin studying the major and minor Old Testament prophets.

I am so proud of the students and their efforts during Stations of the Cross prayer service. I am so proud of them and I am certain you are too. Special thanks to Ms. Graf, Mrs. McLuen, Mrs. Umstead and Mrs. Westholm for all of their efforts in preparing for and presenting the Stations of the Cross.

Social Studies:

This week we continued to study Muslim inventions and discoveries. The Chapter 9 social studies test is scheduled for Thursday, April 20th. This will end our Muslim unit. The format of the test is as follows

  • Vocab terms - 6 questions/12 points (I define, you provide the word no word bank)
  • Multiple choice - 14 questions/14 points
  • Essay - 1 question/12 points (students will have a choice)


Reading: 

Students continue reading our class novel Out of the Dust. Next week, we will have a quiz over Summer-Winter 1935 on Thursday, April 20. We will review for the quiz on Wednesday. We will have the regular weekly vocab quiz on Friday over page 8 words.

Language Arts:  

We are nearing the completion of our poetry unit. Students finished their final poems this week, ending on the sonnet, a very challenging form of writing! Next week, students will get all their poems back, and they will bind them into poetry book collections. Students will then do a "book walk" where they will get to read their classmates' work. Look for those collections to come home, along with their grading rubrics. Please take some time to read over their books - a lot of work went into them, and the students did a fantastic job.

We will have the final test over poetry on Thursday, April 20. This will cover all the forms of poems and figurative language we learned about. Students will get a study guide, and we will review for the test on Wednesday in class.

After finishing the poetry unit, we will focus on grammar, specifically dashes, hyphens and parentheses.

Math Period 1:

The students are working on calculating unit rates and unit costs.  We had a great discussion about when these skills are used in everyday situations.  There is a quiz tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday, April 19th over sections 5.1-5.3 in the book.  Next, we will move on to percents. 

Math Period 4:   

The students are working on the division of fractions.  We used fractions strips to develop understanding.  There are also a couple videos posted on Google Classroom for students to view.  We will spend a couple days reviewing and a quiz over computation of fractions is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, April 19th. 

Math Period 5:    

The students are working on calculating unit rates and unit costs.  We had a great discussion about when these skills are used in everyday situations.  There is a quiz tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday, April 19th over sections 5.1-5.3 in the book.  Next, we will move on to percents. 

Science:

The students took a test on Thursday to assess understanding of minerals.  These tests should be coming home over the weekend for you to review and sign.  Next week we will begin Chapter 5 Rocks.  We are fortunate to have several large boxes of rocks for students to observe and learn about various rock classification during this unit.