Language Arts: This
week we will be jumping right into chapter one of the Growing Your Vocabulary spelling and vocabulary program. Please
ensure that your child has this integral book at school, as we will be using it
in class and assigning homework out of it each night. Below are the Latin
words, roots, and derivatives that will be covered this week:
Latin / Greek Word
|
English Root (part of word)
|
English Derivatives
|
flos, floris (flower)
|
flor
|
flourish, florist, florid,
foliage, foil, portfolio |
dendron (tree / branch)
|
dendr
|
rhododendron, dendrite
|
On Monday,
we will begin reading The Secret Garden!
We will start reading this book together as a class at the beginning of the week,
but expect your child to be reading for homework throughout the rest of the
school year. We will be completing a variety of activities and assignments with
our novels this year including: literature circles, comprehension questions, class-wide
Socratic discussions, reader’s theater, etc. This week, our focus will be on
the literature circle sheet, as we’d like the students to get accustomed to
searching for quality vocabulary, forming discussion questions, and conversing
about all of these things with their peers. Please accompany your child in
reading this book; it’s a wonderful, classic story!
In writing
this week, we will continue discussing effective study skills as well as work
on Journal writing. The students worked in small groups last week to create
posters about a specific study skill we covered. The students will also learn
about proper editing marks and strategies, as well. In Grammar, we will begin
discussing basic parts of speech and identify the parts of a sentence. The
students will also begin discussing analogies and practice completing them. (We
will even use words from our spelling and vocabulary book to make analogies of
our own!)
The proverb
that the students will learn this week is “eleventh hour”. It is important that
we teach the students (early on) that waiting until the last minute to complete
an assignment or task tends to have natural consequences. I look forward to
seeing the scenarios that the children illustrate on their proverb sheets on
Monday!
Your child
will also learn more Latin and Greek words and English derivatives this week. Please
be sure to ask your child to define “derivative” for you and explain what the
word “derive” means. We discussed this a great deal last week. Also, please make note of the list of Latin and Greek words and meaning that I am compiling on the right hand side of this page. :)
History &
Geography: Has your child shared any interesting information about the
lakes of Africa, South America, or North America with you? I encourage you to
ask about these fascinating bodies of water and what they are each well-known
for. The students have seemed very interested in this information! On Monday,
your child will learn about the last group of lakes, which are located in Eurasia.
On Monday, the students will also be coming home with a study guide over the information
we’ve covered on continents and lakes of the world. The test on this content
will be on Thursday. Your child should be coming home with his/her notebook
and book to study every day this week, so please keep an eye out for it.
Science: I hope
your child shared his/her Scientific Investigation foldable with you this
weekend! We will be putting each of these steps into practice by carrying out a
fun science lab on Thursday! On Monday, we will review all of the information
we learned last week, and on Tuesday, I will be prompting the students with the
question, “Does the size of a water balloon (ie: the amount of water in a water
balloon) affect its durability?” Together, our class will complete a full lab
write up on Tuesday and Wednesday, using each step of scientific investigation
to answer this question. The experiment will be carried out on Thursday;
please be sure to ask your child about the outcome! The scientific
investigation test will be on Friday. CLICK HERE for a list of the terms
and concepts that your child is responsible for knowing. All of these can be
found in your child’s science notebook and foldable.
