***Website Updated Tuesday, March 10th

• This Wednesday, March 11th is early release.
• Fifth grade will start leading 9:30 A.M. Rosary this Wednesday, March 11th.  Anyone is welcome to join us at church! 
• Spring pictures are on Thursday, March 12th.  Order forms went home last week.  This is a change from last year.  You must pay the day pictures are taken like in the Fall.  Students may be out of uniform that day, but make sure you are following the guidelines for out of uniform days.  If you have any questions, you may call the school for clarification.
• Franklin County's 4-H program will be visiting our SMS 5th graders next Wednesday the 19th.  They will be making rockets with our kids.  If you or someone you know drinks 2-liters of a Coke product, please send these in by next Thursday.  We will need these in order to do this activity. 
• Students may start taking quizzes for quarter 4 ReadnQuiz.  It is due May 8th. 
• Please remember to keep in mind our peanut allergy when sending your kiddos to school with a snack.  

We are going back to our normal language arts schedule this week.  We will be reading a realistic fiction selection and talking about making predictions, comparing and contrasting, and context clues.  We will continue working on writing full, short answers with evidence. 

In English we will continue growing our Shurley Method skills as well as working on independent and dependent clauses.  Students will have a quiz on Friday over the clauses and complex sentences. 

Did you know research shows that a person needs to be exposed to a new word at least 17 times in order for them to use it correctly in their every day lives?  Please help the kids review their weekly vocab at home!!!!
You should be seeing vocabulary ladders coming home in Friday folders. We have been doing these weekly to help learn our vocabulary words. We start on Monday with two words, add two words on Tuesday, add two more words on Wednesday, and finish on Thursday with the final two words. Before the students complete each day's synonyms and sentences, we talk about each word's definition and the part of speech. Please know that these are not graded for the grade book. I don't expect these sentences to be perfect since we are using this as a tool to learn the words and how to use them in a sentence. I have seen an overall increase in the students' grades on their final reading tests after starting to use these daily. 
  
 
Here is our weekly language arts schedule.  It does differ if we are reading a chapter book or have a short week, etc.  

• Monday:
  • Introduce spelling words-Each week the words focus on a specific word strategy/concept.  We learn this on Mondays.  
  • Introduce vocabulary words-We go over what the words are and start learning them with a game and start to use them in sentences 
  • Introduce English concept for the week
• Tuesday: 
  • We learn our comprehension strategy and the genre we are focusing on for the week.  We talk about this and practice both.  Students always have a workbook assignment on Tuesdays to practice the conepts we are learning about.  
  • Practice English concept
• Wednesday: 
  • We read our weekly story together and revist the week's genre and comrephension strategy
  • Students have questions to answer after reading the story 
  • Practice English concept
• Thursday: 
  • Review spelling and vocab words
  • Students are given the chance to read this week's story alone or in a pair
  • Practice English concept
• Friday: 
  • Students are quizzed on spelling, reading comprehension/vocabulary, and English concept

We are finishing up chapter 9 and will be ready for our test Friday of this week.  The test will cover adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers.  Students will work on a review Wednesday and take a practice test Thursday. 

Here is what a typical math day will look like: 

• 5 minutes of Minute Math or multiplication facts practice to constantly review what we are learning 
• 10-20 minutes of teaching time/notes
• 10-20 minutes of practice time alone, in small groups, or together as a whole class
• Around 15 minutes of independent work time on daily assessment

We are ready for unit 6 and will be learning about the Constitution and the new United States. 

We will be starting chapter 12 this week and focusing on the different forms of prayer. 

We will continue working in our unit on Earth and Space Science.   Students are working on creating their own alien and passport for their alien.  A packet was given to students explaining exactly what needs to be done for this project.  We are completing everything here at school. They are due on Monday when the aliens will be "visiting Earth."