It has been great to see everyone back at school again and hear about the fun and relaxing activities so many of you enjoyed over winter break. January will be a busy month at PCCS, including NWEA testing on Monday (math) and Friday (ELA) of this week. This mid-year testing is a good way for us to look at the progress of our students thus far and identify areas where we can focus our attention for the second half of the year.
In ELA, we started reviewing parts of speech last Monday, and we are now planning to use most Mondays to work on mechanics, usage, and grammar. Some of these lessons will be a review for your students, while others may be new material. Tuesdays we will continue with our spelling unit. Each Tuesday your student can still expect a test or a review of their current spelling sort, depending on which group they are in. This week, spelling tests will be given for Yellow Submarine, Banana S’mores, Australian Hawks, Squishy Bananas, and Disney. We have also completed our five paragraph “Invention Essays.” These inventions will be shared with the class this week in “Shark Tank” style presentations and all students will have an opportunity to “invest” money in the invention ideas of their classmates. Finally, we will begin our second “Connect Five Reading Log” this week. This log is a five day project during which your students are expected to read daily for 20 minutes and answer a daily question of their choice in a strong paragraph.
In social studies, we will begin our National Park research paper and PowerPoint. Guidelines for this project have been sent home with each student, and tomorrow they will be assigned a National Park to research. Please review the expectations for this project and initial your child’s instruction sheet by Tuesday, January 15th.
Also, please make a note that Farm to Table is this Wednesday and Thursday is our field trip to the Field Museum. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have about our trip.