Dear Parents, 
Happy Thursday! I hope you are having a good week. We have a busy week next week...so please check out the calendar. 

Monday/Halloween- We will celebrate Halloween on Monday afternoon. The Civics Club will provide activities and treats for the K-5 in the afternoon. The 5th graders should bring their costume to school on Monday. They will change into them after the activities. The parade will take place in the gym around 2:30. You are invited to attend the parade! If you want to take your child home afterwards, please just let me know before you leave. I am not going to ask for any treats or drinks because I know they will receive that from the activities. I am sure that will be enough. 

Reading- This week we are reading a nonfiction piece on the Everglades. It is story about a 5th grade class that goes there for a field trip. They are also learning about what is happening to the Everglades and the work that is in place to restore the water system. On Tuesday we had a lesson on figuring out the purpose of the story. I broke the class up into 3 groups and assigned each a page to reread. They had to pick a reason as to why it was important to save the Everglades. They then shared their example with the entire class. We are going to discuss that on Thursday. I also showed them a short 7 minute video clip of the Everglades so they could get a better idea of what that park is like. 

Grammar this week is covering the conjunctions (and, but, or or). We worked on writing complex sentences on Wednesday using subordinating conjunctions. This means one sentence or clause is dependent on the other.  We use words such as: when, because, although, and since.  For example: Because I didn't study for my test, I didn't do very well. Although it rained last night, we can still have recess outside. 

Spelling this week is covering homophones: steal, steel, ring, wring, lesson, lessen. I did tell them that on Friday I would mix them up for the posttest. They will have to know the meaning of the word so they know which one to write down. 

Math- We have spent much of the week correcting math tests. This takes time for me because I really want to work them individually to see what they understood of the problem and what was confusing them. We will start our new chapter today. Chapter 2 is division. It will kick off with long division right away with single digit divisors. Some of them are already doing that on our ST Math. I think many of them will move quickly. It may change though when we hit the double digit divisors, but let's not jump to that yet! 

Religion- They have passed their prayers! Now we are going to begin learning every decade of the rosary. They won't learn them all in one shot. I have them focus on one mystery at a time. 

Halloween Stories- During the conferences you can take time to read some of their stories. They are outside my room. They did a great job! 

Friday- Free Spirit Day! Wear your black and red to support the Panther football team. The students may wear their sweats if they want to--for FREE! 

Have a great weekend! I am heading to Doon to do some yardwork at Mom's house...getting it ready for winter. 
God Bless, 
Miss Surma