Dear Parents, I hope you are having a good week! Please make sure your kids have a jacket or coat for Friday. Those temps will be cold for the parade!

Spirit Day- This Friday is Spirit Day. They can wear hats and/or sweats for $1. They can also wear their black and red if they'd like to for homecoming. 

Fire Safety- The fire station will be here on Thursday to give a presentation to the 3-5th graders in the afternoon.  They will also be participating in the Fire Poster Contest later. 

Reading- This week they read the story called Elisa's Diary. Elisa has moved to the USA from Puerto Rico. She has trouble speaking English. She is afraid of being embarrassed. She meets Diego who came from Guatemala. He can speak the English language, but struggles writing it. The two of them help each other learn the area that is difficult for them. Elisa grows up to become a teacher. She teaches her students about working together to succeed. Last week they worked on common and proper nouns. It proved to be difficult for some of them. There were a lot of corrections and some of them didn't do that well on Friday's test with them. This week we continue working on nouns. This time they are writing plural nouns. I am stressing that spelling matters this week because we have different rules for different words. We can't just add -s to all the words to make them plural.

This is our last story in this unit. That means next week they won't have a spelling test. They will have a Unit 1 test. I spread this out over the 4 or 5 days. The first one is usually pretty challenging for them. They need to take their time and not rush. I don't have a set time limit so there is no reason to rush.

Math-They will test over Chapter 1 on Monday. Our book  has an Extra Practice page for them. I will strongly recommend they work on that this weekend just to remind themselves of everything this chapter covers. There is a lot. I will also give them a "cheat sheet" to remind them of everything. They can look at it while taking the test. We will see how they do on Monday. They may need to finish it on Tuesday.

Religion- They finished Chapter 2. We will start our work on the Rosary next. They will be given a paper with two prayers on it. One is the Apostle's Creed and the other is Hail Holy Queen. We say this at the beginning and end of the Rosary. They will need to memorize them and recite them to me. I have a feeling many of them already have them memorized so this could go faster than I think. Once the prayers are done, they will work on knowing the mysteries of the Rosary.

Halloween Stories- I have edited all of them. They have them back and are typing up their final drafts. I  gave them their due dates. Many have already finished typing them up and shared them with me. We will be sharing these next week. They will be reading them aloud. I plan on hanging them in the hallway so you can read them at the Spaghetti Supper on the 19th!

Book Reports- All of them have chosen their books. Their report is due on November 14. Some of them need to do some reading. I know I have some who are choosing to work on Dreambox rather than read their books. I am going to be putting my thumb down a little more as we work through October so they aren't scrambling on November 13.

Homework- I have been talking to your kids. I have a few kids who keep turning in their work with maybe one or two problems not done. I haven't been giving late slips for that, but I do count them wrong. I talked to them about needing to care about their work and making sure everything is answered because while it may only be a point or two now, in middle school and high school that will add up and work against them for their grade. I have been having the same issue with homework that needs to be corrected. Some of them correct one or two of things they missed,but not all. So I have been giving it back a second time, but that is all I am going to do. They won't get a third chance. They need to put some effort in to it and not be more concerned with... I don't want homework.

Friday is a 3 hour early out! We are not serving lunch. 

Panther Pancakes on Friday from 7-8:30 am at STM! Come join us! 

We finished our 2nd Mr. Terupt book on Wednesday during art. We have one more to go in the series. This one is called Saving Mr. Terupt. The 5th graders are already trying to predict what the plot will be for this book! 😊 I better start thinking of the next read aloud! I hope it will compete with these!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!  Enjoy the parade on Friday! I won't be watching... I scheduled a haircut for the same time. 😒 Stay warm!!!!
God Bless,
Miss Surma