1. Ms. Deming’s Weekly Newsletter Last Week’s Happenings…
October 18, 2015
Last Week’s Happenings…
SPIRIT WEEK
Last week was spirit week. The students had a blast getting to dress up. Take a look at some of the highlights below. Monday was mustache day, Tuesday was wear your favorite team day, Wednesday was wacky day and pajama day combined into one, Thursday was Irwin day where students wore Irwin attire, and Friday was wear red for race day!

2. Important Information and Reminders
Happening This Week…
Math
We will continue with our addition and subtraction unit. Students were placed in a standard based group from the data collected on their pretest. The groups are…
Addition
Subtraction
Addition properties/ patterns, and unknown equations
Two step addition and subtraction word problems
Once students show mastery on all these skills, they will be working on a project called “The Million Dollar Project” which ties in 4th and 5th grade standards. We will be taking the unit test next week. Our next math unit that we will begin is multiplication. Students will take a pretest again like they did with addition/subtraction so they know which pathways to complete.
Reading
This week we will wrap up our literature unit. Students will review in class on Monday. They will take their unit test on Tuesday. The skills that students will be tested on are answering questions by referring back to the text for answers, finding the theme or author’s central message of a text, character feelings, traits, motivations, and identifying when a character changes over time, identifying words and phrases and determining between literal and nonliteral, and finally explaining how illustrations add meaning to a story by explaining aspects of characters or setting. Wednesday and Thursday students will complete an in class project on our interactive read aloud: Wonder. The following week we will begin our informational text reading unit.
Writing
The new unit we are starting in writing is called, “Upping the Quality of Personal Narratives.” Students are finishing up publishing their first narrative. It will be a formal grade on 1st quarter report cards. Students will learn how to choose a seed idea for their second personal narrative. They will also study the work of other authors to see how they can improve their own writing.
Grammar
This week the students will continue to work on questions, statements, and complete sentences. Students will have an informal assessment on this at the end of the week. Next week we will learn a new grammar skill.
Science- This week we will begin our energy unit since we didn’t get to it last week. Students will learn about the different types of energy such as heat, light, sound and electrical.
Social Studies- This week the students will finish our first social studies unit on change in communities over time. Students will learn about how ideas change over time. They will get their unit study guide this week. Students will test next week. This week we will also present our Social Studies projects on Wednesday and Thursday.
Dates to know…
-10/19 & 10/20 Ms. Deming is out at the NCAEE conference (Mrs. Monroe will be the substitute teacher)
-10/20 Reading review study guide due & Literature Unit Test
-10/21-10/22 Social Studies Presentations
-10/22 First Quarter Ends
-10/22 Social Studies study guide passed out and due on Monday
-10/22 Interactive notebooks due & 1st personal narrative published piece due
-10/23 No School Teacher Workday
-10/26 Social Studies study guide due
-10/27 Social Studies unit test
-10/28 Math Addition/Subtraction Unit Test
-10/30 October Birthday Celebrations 3:00 (due to our recess time we can’t do 3:30)
-11/6 Fall Enrichment Clusters begin (The live link to sign up through Sign Up Genius went live this past Friday night at 6. If your child didn’t sign up, you will want to ASAP. It is first come first serve).
Vocabulary Dates:
-List 2 words introduced 10/12-10/13
-Test on list 2 Thursday 10/22 (Due to no school on Friday)
Spelling Dates:
Group 1: New words introduced 10/14 and test 10/21
Group 2: New words introduced 10/15 and test 10/22
Group 3: New words introduced 10/16 and test 10/22 (Due to no school Friday)
Notes from Ms. Deming 
Parent/Teacher Conferences – Please make sure you have signed up for a conference if you haven’t already done so! First quarter conferences are mandatory for all parents. The link is:
Reminder that there is no school on Friday. Therefore dates for spelling group 3’s test and the vocabulary test will be Thursday.
Please make sure to check over your child’s interactive notebooks this week because they will be collected and graded on Friday.
Important Information and Reminders
Still in need of:
-Expo markers (any color)
-1 pack of Mr. Sketch scented markers
-The following multicultural books for our next rdg unit (they are all picture books. Let me know if you need the author):
The Librarian of Basra
Rain School
My Librarian is a Camel
Nasreen’s Secret School
A Day’s work
My Name is Yoon
That Woman Book
I am also in need of
2 parents to help with calling local businesses for donations for our Genius Hour class project. me if interested!