Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Week of September 5th

Happy Tuesday Everyone,

    I hope everyone had a wonderfully long weekend. I am very thankful that Hermine was not as bad as projected. Coming up on Wednesday will be our first Enrichment Lab. Students will be dismissed to their lab at 1:15 and will return to class at 2:00. 

     This week in math students will need to complete their math super star sheet by Friday. Keep in mind that it is a short week. Students will be bringing home their first timed facts sheets this week. The multiplication sheet counted for a classwork grade, the division sheets will not be counted for a grade until the second nine weeks. Students were given 3 minutes on each sheet to answer as many problems as they could. Students should be scoring at the 75% mark at the beginning of the year. On this weeks multiplication sheet the average was 86% in Ms. Johnson's homeroom and 84% in Mrs. Pavlinek's homeroom. If your child is having difficulty with their facts I suggest purchasing or making some flash cards. Take out the facts that are any number times 10, 11, and 12 and practicing with the rest. If you are able to set a timer for 3 minutes that would also be great practice. Students can also go to:
http://www.softschools.com/math/games/mad_minute_math/multiplication/
http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/Mathmagician/mathsmulti.html
https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/math-trainer-multiply.html

     Beginning next week students will begin working on i-Ready as part of their weekly math homework. Based on the diagnostic test that we took on the computer last week students have been given a personalized list of lessons based on their score on the diagnostic. The i-Ready program will first give the student a lesson with examples and chances to practice. After the lesson students will take a quiz based on that lesson.  Students are required to complete at least 30 minutes of i-Ready at home each week. The window for each week opens on Friday afternoon and closes the following Friday morning. Students will receive a log and will be required to fill in the log with the names of the activities that they completed at home, the times that they were on the computer and the scores that they earned on the quiz. Their quiz grades for each week will be averaged together and entered as a homework grade. Students can break up their 30 minutes anyway that works best for you and their schedules (30 minutes all on one day, or split over the course of the week). Students do not get credit for their time on the computer until the quiz is taken. As we start working on this assignment please help your child fill out their log. Students will need to turn in their completed log each Friday. If students are unable to work on a computer at home they can come into the classroom each morning from 8:00-8:30.

     This week in science we will continue learning about the scientific method. Students will complete a lab where we will be applying the different parts of the process. Students can also visit the science websites page of my class blog to watch movies and play games where they can practice using the scientific method. It is vitally important for students to learn the scientific method. Not only will we use it for the rest of year for our in class labs, students will also be called upon to use it in every science class that they take for the rest of their school career.

     In social studies we will finish up chapter 1. Students will take the test on chapter 1 next week. For homework this week students are asked complete the first 5 social studies vocabulary words. If students did not copy them down in class. They can pull them up by going to the S.S. Vocab tab at the top of this page. 


Have a GREAT week,
Ms. Johnson

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