Weekly Update: October 3-7, 2011

Hello, wonderful families!
Conferences are coming! Conferences are coming! Sign up for your spot today! Our link is up and running at www.SignUpGenius.com/go/fall2759. I tried to provide a wide variety of conference times. If you are able to meet in the afternoon, please do, as morning and evening conference times are limited.

Please consider signing up for Tuesday reading groups when we return from fall break! We will be reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It can lead to some really phenomenal discussions. If you have questions about reading groups, please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail!

Please continue to be mindful of student uniforms including: belts for boys, matching hair accessories for girls, and appropriate shoes for all! :)

This week at a glance:
Language Arts- we will not be learning new Riggs Words this week, but will instead be working on our Riggs Notebook. This will lead to additional discussion and practice with spelling rules and markings. We will still have spelling tests on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to test last weeks' words. We will also continue our focused review of grammar, with a quiz on parts of speech on Friday. In reading, we are finishing up Shiloh on Monday and Tuesday. Then we will be writing interviews with the main characters during the week!

History & Geography- we have a special guest speaker from Australia coming to talk to our class on Monday morning. Then we will begin our unit on World  Rivers. We will be reading the first 2 chapters of the History and Geography text this week and discussing how rivers play an important role in the development of major cities and in daily human life.

Science- We will continue our study of ecology, wrapping up with a test on Thursday. The students are responsible for understanding the following terms and concepts: ecology, environment, the four features of habitat, herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, predator/prey relationships, food chains and food webs. We are taking detailed notes together in class, which combined with worksheets and handouts will be sufficient review material for the test. Our final event will be a dissection of Owl Pellets on Friday! You don't want to miss this exciting exploration into ecology! :)