TeacherWeb®

October 2, 2009

Dear Parents,

We are back to our routine after the excitement of Science Camp. It was a lot of fun! Hiking, teambuilding and studying habitats are only a few things we enjoyed during our week at the camp. We had great weather all week, and the students enjoyed every minute of their time there. I hope you have had the time to talk to your kids about their experiences. Thanks to all the parents for arranging the snacks on our return from camp. Thanks also to those of you who loaded and unloaded the buses. You are awesome!

Last week we also took the ERB Writing Assessment. The test was administered on Tuesday, September 22^nd and Thursday, September 24^th. The students seemed to like the prompt and enjoyed writing. We have been doing a lot of work with sentence variety and descriptive writing. Students have also been working on grammar rules to help with writing mechanics.

Math

We have just about finished our first unit in math. Students received a review packet yesterday to use as a study aid. Daily problem- solving and writing about our mathematical thinking continues. The Unit 1 assessment will be on Tuesday, 10/6.

Book Project

The book project rough drafts are due on Wednesday, October 7^th. Final cubes are due the following week on Wednesday, October 14^th. Please make sure your child follows all the directions. Your child has a rubric in his/her binder to help him/her with the assignment. Students will be presenting their story cubes to the class on the due date.

Geography

Students took the quiz for Sets 1-4 yesterday. The quiz is in their Friday Folder. Please go over it with your child and help him/her study for the next quiz on Sets 1-5. Students also need to work on spelling the words correctly. Please sign and return the Geography Quiz journal. Today students also took a short quiz on map features. This quiz will come home in next weekÕs Friday Folder.

Science

In science, students conducted controlled experiments with swingers and practiced using the scientific method to record information. We spent a lot of time discussing the difference between an independent and dependent variable. Ask your child about the swingers. Beginning next week, we will be conducting experiments to see how different variables affect evaporation. We are looking at the relationship between temperature and evaporation and how surface area affects evaporation.

I Know Quiz