3rd Nine Weeks: Week 9

Yes, this is week 9 of the 9-weeks, however, due to the snow days, this 9-weeks will not end until next Friday, the 14th of March.

This week is Write-On Shades Cahaba!  Wednesday we will be welcoming authors Lori Nichols and Helen Lester into the school.  Make sure to ask your child to tell you more about what he/she learned from the authors.

Our field trip to the Huntsville Depot and Museum is next Wednesday.  It will be a wonderful learning experience for us all as we learn more about how the Civil War affected our state.  If you have not already returned the signed permission slip and $7, please send those in as soon as possible.

Reading: This week, we are finishing our biography unit, so the children are spending time in the classroom working on their biography webpages, but they can also work on these at home.

Spelling: The words this week all have a VCCV pattern.  This morning we looked at all of the words and divided them into syllables, noticing that all of the words divided between those two consonants.  Hopefully this skill can help them remember if there are two of the same digit in the middle in words such as attend and collect.

Language: The focus this week is on other punctuation such as commas and quotation marks.  The students will be learning these comma rules:
-Use a comma with items in a series
-Use a comma to separate the city and state
-Use a comma to separate the day and the year in a date
-Use a comma with a noun of direct address (Bob, will you hand me the ketchup?)
-Use a comma after an introductory clause (When I got home from school, I realized I had forgotten my homework.)
-Use a comma to separate an appositive (Mr. Lowry, the principal, praised the students.)
-Use a comma with a conjunction to join two complete thoughts
-Use a comma to separate a quote from the speaker

Math: The students are busy working on fractions.  They will be working on equivalent fractions and comparing fractions to landmark fractions (such as 1/2) as well as learning how to compare fractions with unlike denominators.

Alabama History: We have started the Civil War unit, one of my very favorite units of the year, and often times a favorite of the students as well.  We will be focusing this week on the differences between the North and the South as well as reasons why the South seceded.

Science: We will be looking at parallel and series circuits this week as well as making our very own switches!