Language Arts-
Students will be making connections to the characters in Sharon Creech's Granny Torrelli Makes Soup
as we read this month. We will talk about how writers use flashbacks and point of view to get their
messages across and add voice to their writing. Encouraged by The Boy Who Loved Words, students
have started their own word collections. Each week students can nominate a word to be the "word of
the week". Voting will take place on Friday, and on Monday the winner will be revealed.
We are going to focus on each of the traits of writing over the next few weeks to get a better
understanding of what we mean when we say "ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice,
and conventions." We will read anchor books to remind us of each trait. Students will be writing a
descriptive writing piece, focused on using sensory details, onomatopoeias, and prepositional phrases.
Science-
The month of October was filled with testing unknown minerals. We learned that properties are used
to help geologists identify and classify objects, so we gathered all the information we could about the
minerals' properties. Now, using the information we have gathered, we will be identifying the minerals.
Then students will choose a mineral to study further and present a speech about it in class.
The magnetism of one of the minerals, magnetite, sparked quite a few questions about magnets. We
will be learning about magnets by experimenting with them and reading about them.