May 18, 2012

WOW, the end of the year is almost here.

NWEA math testing is on tuesday, make sure your child is well rested!

Our story this week was a biography called Ceaser E. Chavez. He is the “Marin Luther King Jr.” for Mexican Americans. This story takes us through his childhood and into his adulthood where we learn about how he became a leader for workers rights. He was involved in two hunger strikes and organized unions for farm workers to help them get better wages. The vocabulary words for this story were: weakened, boycott, strike, treated, awarded, border, union, and crops. In grammar, the students reviewed the correct use of quotation marks and colons, adverbs, homophones and homographs, synonyms and antonyms, and compound sentences with conjunctions. They have been doing well with the review of all of this grammar!  Remember to continue using Lexia at home. You may use these minutes for your Reading Rodeo as well! 

HOMEWORK: your child should read at least 20 min. every school night. Remember to fill out the reading rodeo to show how much reading your child does every month.

This week we focused on reading and interpreting picture and bar graphs. They took a test on this on Friday. Look for it to come home on Monday. Your child will take their NWEA Math test on Tuesday afternoon. Please make sure they are well rested for this test. I would also love to have parent volunteers to help read the test to students. The test is on Tuesday at 12:00. Please let me know if you can help out.  

HOMEWORK: A weekly math packet is due by Friday- all pages must be complete.

We continued learning about the last 3 simple machines:  the inclined plane, the wedge, and the screw. The students made their own model of an inclined plane, worked with screws, and used a wedge to separate play dough. They will have a test on this next Thursday, May 24^th. They should study their simple machines journal that they made in school, their study guide, and their vocabulary cards.

We started the week learning about 5 more Greek gods and goddesses.  We then started learning about the Trojan War and Trojan Horse.  I am guessing some second graders have been sharing the story at home. 

The last lesson in our conventions unit is about punctuation and writing complete sentences. The students reviewed this and worked with a partner to cut and paste pieces together to make a complete sentence. We also started learning how to make a brochure.

Happy birthday to Breanna! It was Monday. Thanks for celebrating with us!

Don’t forget to have your child practice for when they get to “Be the Teacher” in the next couple of weeks. I’ll send home a reminder slip next week of what day your child will teach.  

A fish ceremony for May will be held on Friday, May 25^th at 2:45pm.

No school Monday May 28^th.

Field trips on Wednesday May 30^th and Thursday, May 31^st. Home lunch required for Wednesday to Murphy’s Landing!  For Thursday, if you are signed up for a hot lunch, you will get a cold bag lunch to eat. Otherwise, you will need a home lunch on this field trip as well.

Field day is Thursday, June 7^th. If you’d like to volunteer, let Mr. Kappel know.

Spring Fling tomorrow. Hope to see you there!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Jennifer Mielke

jmielke@cologneacademy.org