5-2 Updates ~ 02/15

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!! to our wonderful room moms (and all the other moms who showed up to help!) for a delightful Valentine's Day Party!!  What a relaxing and enjoyable afternoon we had together playing fun games, making adorable crafts, and eating DELICIOUS chocolate fondue!!  An additional thank you to Mrs. Dattilo for taking pictures during the party...I've posted them below this post so you can see how much fun we really had :)

Thank you to all of you who made me feel so loved with all those "sweet" treats - I appreciate them so much!!  And one more thank you...after the party, I found an adorable tin of chocolates with all of your children's beautiful faces carefully placed with chocolates in candy cup liners.  What a sweet surprise when I took my first chocolate out!!  Whoever took all that time, also made sure to get each child's signature in the tin for me - I don't know who you are, but you made me feel so loved!!  Thank you :)

Important Dates

CogAT Makeups ~ If your child missed any of the CogAT tests last week, they will be scheduled for makeups this week.  Unfortunately, since we are under strict time constraints, I don't have a schedule for those makeups.  We will schedule them when proctors are available.

Incoming 6th Grade Parent/Principal Coffees

All Schools:  Wednesday, February 17th at 7:00pm ~ Thomas Middle School
Thomas:  Thursday, February 18th at 9:15AM
South:  Monday, 2/29 at 9:45 am & 6:30pm, Thursday, 3/10 at 1:30pm, Wednesday, 3/16 at 9:45am

Advanced Placement Testing (Math + ALA) ~ March 14-16th ~ As I mentioned in an email last week, if your child scored above the 80%ile on the Math MAPS test and you would like your child tested for advanced placement, please follow the link in my email to appeal for testing.  If you have any questions at all about this process, please do not hesitate to ask - the process is different this year, and there may be misunderstandings.  Please let me know if you choose to have your child take the Math Advanced Placement Test so I am aware.  Thank you!

Progress Reports ~ Friday, 3/11

Parent Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, 3/17 & Friday, 3/18

Spring Break ~ 3/21 - 3/28

Visit to Thomas/South - Wednesday, 4/20 - Students will visit the middle schools with teachers during the school day.

Incoming 6th grade Parent & Student Orientation - Thursday, 4/21 - evening event, time TBD

Math

We are working with exponential and scientific notation in Unit 7, as well as learning the order of operations.  If your child does not have automaticity with their math facts, please have them continue to practice at home.  It is critical that these foundational skills are mastered this year, or future concepts will be quite challenging.  Students would also benefit from practicing Unit 7 skills on Khan Academy at home!

Science

Everyone is excited to return to designing and building their Rube Goldberg inventions this week in science!  We will be designing, drawing and labeling our Rube Goldberg inventions on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the big class reveal scheduled for Thursday!  This will draw our Energy Unit to a close, and we will return to Social Studies on Friday with an introduction to the Constitution of the Unites States - a timely topic given all that is happening in the news lately!

Reading

To be sure students are fully prepared for the final assessment, we will spend two more days working on prompts similar to the ones they will encounter on the final test.  Our Fiction Unit Assessment is scheduled for Thursday, 2/18.

Writing

We continued to work on identifying evidence to support our claims about character traits in The Liberation of Gabriel King in our WEX lessons.  We will begin working on our final Response to Fiction Essays in two weeks.

“Children do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”      ~ Teddy Roosevelt

Cheers ~

Mrs. Theresa Fowler