Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

Reader’s Workshop

We will continue with our deep study of character unit. We will shift our focus toward how setting shapes characters. We will look at the precise language authors use to describe the setting, how characters are torn by the pressures of places, and how settings change both physically and psychologically over time. The kids will continue reading each night and working in their reader’s notebooks.

Writer’s Workshop

The students will finish their first full literary essay and turn it in on Wednesday. They will be using mentor texts and their argument writing checklist to revise. By the end of the week we will start on our next literary essay where we will try to lift the level of complexity in the writing.

Math

Math Answers and Help Here

We will start a new unit on Monday (Rational Numbers- See Family Preview). This unit will focus on negative numbers, inequalities, absolute value, the coordinate plane, and common factors and multiples. We will also continue to review basic skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division or whole numbers, fractions, and decimals and order of operations). In addition, I will be working on a new layout for the gradebook in math. I will out line this new system in a video I will send out as soon as possible so please look out for that.

History

We will start a new unit: Ancient India. In this unit, we will study the major beliefs and practices of Brahmanism (and how that evolved into early Hinduism) and the important aesthetic and intellectual traditions of Ancient India.

Science

We will continue looking at weather this week specifically the factors that influence weather and the characteristics of cold fronts and warm fronts.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray