January 2010: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I do hope that the holidays and new year have treated you all well! Here's what is going on...

IN GENERAL:
- On Wed., February 24 2010, the 5th grade will be attending the play "I Have a Dream". The cost is $9.00. Money is due Tues. Jan. 26, 2010.
- No school, Monday January 18, 2010 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
-Book orders are due to me by Friday, January 15, 2010.
-Honor Roll Assembly, Thursday January 14, 2010. Grades 6-8 at 8:00; Grades 2-5 at 10:00.

MATH CLASSES: We have started Chapter 5, Graphing! So far we have been working with line plots, frequency tables, and double bar graphs. We will be working with single bar graphs, line graphs, and circle graphs too. We are learning a lot of new vocabulary that goes along with this chapter as well.
We are still doing our fluency practice "Monkey Island Math". We do these timed drills 3 times a week. PARENTS: There are still some students on 3's and 4's on their timed tests! PLEASE help your child with these. Ask him or her 1 or 2 problems a night. Keep doing this as you get dinner ready, as you clean up, as your child washes up to go to bed, and throughout the evening. By the end of the night your child will remember the fact! Then on fluency days your child will build more confidence in him/herself once his/her monkey is moved to the top of the tree!

READING: We are finishing Theme 2: Give it All You've Got! In this theme we read many stories about people who "give it all they've got" and never give up. We will be completing this theme, and testing on the theme this month.
Parents, keep an eye out for "Thursday Folders". You will see the graded papers that have been done during that week. Some students are not correcting and returning papers that need to be fixed.

WRITING: We are almost done our first formal writing piece. We have been working diligently on our 5 Paragraph Descriptive Writing Piece. We have been learning the value of organizing our paragraphs, using a thesaurus/dictionary when needed, all while painting a picture with words.
SPELLING: We are back on track with working with spelling words each Wednesday. Students will be receiving new words and testing on old words each Wednesdays. Please help your child study for these weekly tests!

Please let me know if there is anything that I can do to help you! Email me anytime: jcobble@pca.k12.de.us
Take Care,
~Mrs. Cobble