HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We eased on in to 2017 this past week.  All students did a wonderful job transitioning back to school time.  It was especially more challenging with all the cooped up indoor recess!  Hopefully, the playground will thaw out for next week.  In our short week, we focused on a narrative District Writing Assessment, finishing up our math service project left over from last year, enjoying our Discovery game in SS, making progress on Book Shares, and reviewing some principles of experimental design in science.  We also enjoyed a wonderful presentation from the Missouri Department of Conservation on the Bear and Elk population in Missouri.  The main event this week is the Instrument Extravaganza field trip on Wednesday.  This trip highlights fine arts opportunities in middle and high school and leads up to Instrument Try Me Out nights coming up soon at middle schools.  Below is our focus for next week in all subjects.

READING:  One more week to focus on book shares.  Each student should have 4 completed by this Friday and then 5 by the end of January.  This week, we will also be choosing new books for our next book club.

WRITING:  We will be incorporating narrative writing techniques during our Discovery time in Social Studies.  Each student will begin drafting and planning an Explorer narrative from the point of view of an Explorer.

SS:  We will likely finish our Discovery game this week while working on narratives and learning about a few more European Explorers, leading up to the English/American Colonial period.

MATH:  By Tuesday, we should complete our math service project.  For this project, our class is dividing up manipulatives into kits for check out by teachers and students.  They are documenting their work in math posters. After the service project is complete, we will move on to Algebra and Variables.

SCIENCE:  Each student will be completing their own experiment this week.  This experiment will serve as an assessment for the experimental design components we studied and reviewed recently.