October 5-9, 2015

General Announcements:

• Shoes, Shoes and more Shoes: Earth Savers Science Club will be sponsoring a Gently Used Shoe Collection Drive that will go throughout the month of October.
• If any of your kids are interested in community service opportunities, please let them know about the BUC's Club.  They can pick up a form from the counselors office.  The first meeting will be next week.  The first community service project will be Saturday, Oct. 24 at Light House.  This is a women and children shelter in downtown Birmingham.  They will do an arts and crafts activity from 10-11:00. More details will be discussed at the 1st meeting and you will be contacted with information. The counselors are planning four events throughout the year.  These events have not been finalized yet, but as they approach more information will come out to students and parents. This is an opportunity for students to get community service hours.  Parents will need to provide transportation. 
• Don’t forget to check your child’s grades from time to time on INOW.  
• We are in the process of contacting parents if we feel a conference is needed at this time. If we don't contact you and you would like a conference, please let us know.

Important Curriculum Dates

10/9 DOL Test

10/9 Reading/Vocabulary Test

Looking Ahead

10/12:  No School for Students

10/14:  Report Cards coming home

Math News:

Topics of Study – 

**Math- We are starting our work in Volume and three-dimensional capacity. Our first goal is to understand and find the "base" of a rectangular cube. Then, we will locate and calculate the number of "layers" this cube shows. This will soon take us into making a connection with seeing that Volume is found when we know the three-dimensions of an object. Our prior skills in multiplication and division will serve us well in this unit.

Homework: IXL and Math Computation, Mathbook Unit #2 page 7-8

Test: Friday on Multiplication, Division, Order of Operation Only. No Volume questions

 Science News:

Topics of Study –   
**Science- We are working in class, on our spheres of the Earth project. In these representations, we are trying to show an ecosystem and examples of how these four spheres interact with each other. We will also take a more detailed view of the amount of water on the Earth, and how much is salt water, and how much is freshwater. We will then take this information and create a bar graph and a pie chart. After we wrap up these concepts, we will begin to look at the lithosphere and ways that people can help protect our planet from ecological disasters.
Test: Thursday on identifying things that are part of the four spheres. Ex: Trees are part of the Biosphere, the wind is part of the Atmosphere.

Language Arts News:

Topics of Study -

**Reading: We switched back to Reading this week.  We will be reading a passage about the origins of Southern food.  Our focus for the week will be locating the main idea and the supporting details.  We will have a reading comprehension test over this passage on Friday. There will also be a vocabulary test on Friday over the words we discuss throughout the week.
Homework: Reading comprehension/Vocabulary test tomorrow

**Reading Log-Reading logs came home today and will be due on Friday, Oct. 9.  Remind your child to add details to their answers.
Homework: Reading logs are due tomorrow.

**Language- Students work on DOL and IXL each day during the first few minutes of Lang. Arts. Please encourage your child to use their time wisely to complete this assignment.  For IXL, I average all 4 IXL scores for a grade in Language Arts each week.  We will have a DOL Test on Friday, Oct. 9.

Homework: IXL Language should be completed by tomorrow.

Social Studies:

Topics of Study – We started our unit on the Colonies today. We will be learning about life in the New England, Middle and Southern colonies.

                   

We hope everyone has a great week!