Week of Feb. 15th -19th

Literacy

Read Aloud

• Zathura, by Chris Van Allsburg, we will focus on identifying past tense verbs as we read along , identifying the Author's Purpose, and Point of View.

Shared Reading

• We will read our School's Mission Statement and Philosophy to understand it and discuss it as a class.
• Excerpts from Zathura, focus on identifying the main idea

Interactive Writing:

• We will finish the chart about abbreveations
• We will write our ideas/steps to funnel a topic (an activity done to narrow a broad topic to a more specific topic to make it easier to write about)
• We will write an interpretation about our school's Mission Statement and Philosophy

Independent Writing

• We will write 10-12 topics we call "Things that are close to our heart..." , which are topics students feel strongly identified to, are special to them, or they know a lot about. They will write this list to refer to when doing free writng (student selected topic) in class. We will later funnel some of these topics to get acquainted with this technique.
• Students will write their own interpretation of the School's Mission Statement and Philosophy.
• Students will select a topic from "Things that are close to my heart..." and write about it.

Students will aso participate in Centers, Independent Reading, Book Clubs, and Writing Cycles

MATH
This week we continue with our Geometry Unit. We are moving from solid figures, polygons, and triangles, to identifying triangles by their angles (right angle, acute, or obtuse). Students should be able to identify and name different angles, as well as these angles within a triangle. They will be quized on this on Wednesday.
We will also be reviewing congruent figures and motions (flip, slide, turn) but calling them by new names (reflection, rotation, translation). Going beyond this, students will be exploring similar figures. Next week will be a quiz on these topics.

IMPORTANT: Last week we tried to do a problem solving activity using fractions. Many students forgot how to add or subtract fractions that had different denominators. This week (as bellwork) we will be reviewing adding and subtracting fractions (mixed and improper fractions included), as well as focusing on problem solving. Next week there will be a problem solving quiz on fractions. Please have students review these at home. They can use any of the past websites (still listed under Math sites on the right side of our blog page) to help.

Timed Test: This week we will begin the division timed tests. We will begin with 1 as a divisor. The nice thing about 1 as a divisor, is that any number divided by 1 stays the same! This should be an easy week, but please prepare students for 2 as a divisor, which will be next week.

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week we continue our study of the United States, and specifically the Southwest region. We will be learning about different landforms and resources of the region.