Friday, January 8, 2010

The Week of January 11, 2010

Dear Parents and Students:
This week we will be taking the IOWA tests. The tests will cover skills in language arts and math. They will be given Monday - Thursday. Please make sure you are well rested and have had a healthy breakfast in order to do your best on these tests.
Bringing a snack on these days is a good idea too since testing is tiring!
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T.G.F.D. = Too Good For Drugs begins this week with Deputy Dave Kotovsky.
This is a substance abuse prevention curriculum. There will be a total of 9 lessons that focus on the dangerous substances that are used widely by young people. A letter will be sent home explaining this program in more detail after our first session on Thursday.
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THIS WEEK IN MISS TREFONAS'S CLASS:
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SPELLING: Lesson 16 and word of the week
We are also going to have our classroom spelling bees this week. The first two spelling bees will be practice rounds. These will take place on Monday and Wednesday. On Friday, we will have our final classroom spelling bee where we will get a winner and runner up to compete in the 5th grade spelling bee on Thursday, 1/21/10. There will be two winners from the entire 5th grade who will then compete in the school district spelling bee on Thursday, 2/4/10
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ENGLISH: We are still working on Unit 3 verbs and should be testing the following week.
This week we will be learning about irregular verbs and correct verb usage.
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READING: We are not doing a lot with reading this week due to IOWA testing.
We will do some work with the reading skill of main idea and supporting details.
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SCOOPer Reading: Your child may count the time they read for our class reading program as minutes for the Six Flags reading program and the Ozzie's Kane County Cougar reading program. Your child should be pacing themselves to meet their second trimester goal.
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SOCIAL STUDIES: Chapter 7 -Lesson 3 "French and Indian War"
Your child should review Lessons 1 and 2.
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SCIENCE: "This Place is a Zoo"
We will be doing a project that involves the information learned in Chapter 6 about animals adaptations, food chains, and ecosystems in which they live. We will be researching an animal in depth using the internet and the final product will be a poster .
The students will get an assignment sheet and be given deadlines indicating when each part of the project should be completed. Most of this project will be completed in school.
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MATH: We are taking IOWA tests in Math on Wednesday and Thursday.
We are skipping to Chapter 11 "Number Theory"
Lesson 1 - Multiples and Least Common Multiples
Lesson 2 - Divisibility Rules
Lesson 3 - Factors and Greatest Common Factor