Monday, November 16, 2009

Monday, November 16, 2009

Today's Homework:

Reading ~ Take Home Reader 20 minutes
Spelling ~ Spelling Activities due on Friday (2 activities need to be complete)
Math ~ Mrs. Gumbs' group WS 9.8 (#10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
Science ~ Science Project due December 1st.

Newspapers
For our next Writing Menu, the students are searching newspapers for their activities. If you have extra used newspapers lying around, please send them in, as we will be using them for the next month. Thanks!

Canned Food
The Student Council is collecting Canned Food until November 20th. Please be considerate and donate a can or two. Thanks!!


Spelling
Your child has 5 words for the week. The 5 words vary from student to student. The words are in your child's binder. They are highlighted. Our focus this week is "r" sounds with a vowel. Here is the entire list for this week:

snore
spare
appear
prepare
pioneer
smear
ignore
engineer
volunteer
declare
Enrichment words: impair, directory, hardware, clearance, porpoise

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Today's Homework:

Reading ~ Take Home Reader 20 minutes
Vocabulary ~ 4 Box WS for the word "weathering"
Math ~ Mrs. Gumbs' math group WS 9.8 circled problems only

Spelling
I have revised Spelling. Each child was given a Spelling pretest on Monday on 10 words. The first 5 words that are incorrect are your child's spelling words for the week. If they got all 10 words correct then their spelling words are the enrichment words. They will be tested on only these 5 words. My purpose in doing this is to create mastery. I felt that by having 20 words, many students were not mastering the phonics that the words had (example: short "a" sounds) and they were not mastering the SPELLING of the words. There will be a test each Friday, which I feel that is a good goal for all students since they are working on knowing their 5 words.
This weeks words focuses on Consonant Blends (sh, ch, ph, etc):
shovel
chapter
hyphen
establish
although
approach
astonish
shatter
charity
pharmacy
Enrichment words: emphasis, sophomore, athlete, phenomenal, chimpanzee
Vocabulary
I have also revised the vocabulary. Your child will need to know 5 words. These words are taken from our content areas: Reading, Math, Social Studies, Science, with a heavy emphasis on S.S. and Science words. I felt the students needed to focus on content vocabulary as I have seen a weakness with these words. I also cut the list down to 5 for each week. They will be tested every Friday on these 5 vocabulary words.
The vocabulary for this week is: weathering, abrasion, erosion, meander, tributary.
Wednesday Folders
PLEASE send back all work for your child's portfolio on Thursday. Be sure to sign the portfolio page, or the progress report that is attached to your child's work. Please go through your child's Wednesday folder. I do not need anything from the "Take Home and Keep" section. Going through your child's folder keeps you informed about the happenings at Gibson.
Cookie Dough
Cookie dough pick up is Friday, November 6 at Gibson from 2-7pm. All cookie dough must be picked up by 7pm on Friday.
UPDATES
Lastly, November is a crazy month with the days off from school. Your child should be reading EVERY night....including weekends. Also, your child should be working on their Science Fair Project. This is due in December, and December will be here before you know it, so don't let time slip away. Remember -- the project MUST be an experiment....NOT a model. Your child will need to TEST something. If your child is having difficulty, ASK. A GOOD science fair project does not have to be difficult. Judges (including myself) are looking for a well thought out plan on something the student has tested and recorded data (pictures, graphs, conclusion, future thoughts as to why or why not the experiment went as planned).
THANK YOU for all that you do for your children.