Friday, May 12
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Happy Mother’s Day!
Almost everyone has finished their math MCAS for this year! The students worked really hard. Now we will have a chance to revisit math concepts that were more difficult and do math projects. You will notice that the math homework for the rest of the year will mostly be mixed review. Speaking of homework, we will go back to spelling words for the next few weeks. You will find the words in the folders today.
Field Trips
Please find the field trip form for our trip to Old Deerfield on June 2. These forms should be returned by Friday, May 19. We also finally have a date for our trip to Crimson and Clover Farm in Florence. It will be June 9 from 12:30-2. We will have an earlier lunch on this day. These permission slips will go home next week. We can only take a limited number of chaperones for both of these trips so I may need to pull names from a hat. Thanks for all of your interest in helping!
Writing
Many students have finished their animals research reports.These will come home at the end of the year. In the meantime, find out what text features your child chose to include in their final drafts.
Students have started writing various ideas for opinion essays this week. We are still at a stage of brainstorming and drafting. We have focused on making sure that you state your opinion clearly and then using various reasons to back up your opinion. We have talked about thinking of your audience and how you will convince them. At home, discuss different opinions that your child has from favorite foods to favorite activities or creative solutions that they have to problems. We have looked at essays about if school should start later or earlier and that rats are the best pet.
Math
Over the next two weeks we will be doing geometry projects and revisiting questions from the geometry test to help students learn concepts that were still difficult for them. Today we started designing pastures for farm animals using perimeter and area.
Social Studies
This week we learned about the Declaration of Independence and the Second Continental Congress. Next week we will wrap up our study of the American Revolution.
Have a good weekend,
Jessica Harwood