I hope everyone is having a great week! I am enjoying these fall temps. Mrs. Sickels keeps telling me about how cold our winter is supposed to be. Shush! I am not ready for that kind of talk yet! 

Calendar Dates: 

Oct. 17- Spirit Day

Oct. 20- Flu Shots at school 

Oct. 27-30 Parent Teacher Conferences

Oct. 29- Halloween Parade at 2:15 pm 

Oct. 31- No School 

Nov. 1- Holy Day of Obligation/ All Saints' Day

Math- We are starting our multiplication chapter.  With the first lesson I let them use a calculator to solve the problems. They were working on noticing the patterns when we multiply by 10s 100s and 1000s. We brought back exponents too!  Our next lesson was on estimating factors to find their product using mental math. 20 x 200=?   It is a good chance to review rounding.  The next lesson should be review because they will be multiplying by a single digit. I know they did that in 4th grade.  Our real focus of this chapter will be multiplying by double digits. 48 x 87 and bigger like 312 x 98. We will also work on multiplying with 0's.  Now, I do tell them if they don't know their facts they can use their multiplication table in their composition books.  I don't want them sitting there using their fingers to find 8 x 9 while trying to get their assignment done. Feel free to do flashcards at home or in the car! 

Reading- They have taken their first Module test ( unit test). I have a few to check tonight, but overall I was pleased with the scores. They were better than I thought they would be! I will show you their actual test at conferences.  Today I gave them a spelling pretest for our new story.  Our next story is another fantasy story. This one has a bit of a mystery to solve. It is also one of the longer stories- I think it is 18-19 pages.  In grammar we will be focusing on what a common noun is and what a proper noun is. I think street names and acronyms and some groups and official titles get confusing. 

Religion- We are working on our booklets for the mysteries. We are reading short verses from the Bible and then summarizing them . I plan on showing you those at conferences as well. 

Halloween Parade will be on October 29 at 2:15 in the gym. Students should come to school with their costume in their bag. You are welcome to attend!  If you plan on taking your child home afterwards, make sure to stop in the room and check out with me so that I know they are gone!  No weapons or anything close to a weapon for the costume are allowed. It is also a mass day, but they DON'T have to wear mass clothes that day.  It isn't a spirit day so they cannot wear sweatpants, but jeans or shorts (depending on temps) are okay. 

Conferences- Have you gone into JMC and  picked your day and time?? Please do so ASAP.

Spirit Day on Friday! Sweats and/or hat for $1!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Big plans? Whatever you're doing- have fun! Be safe! 

God Bless,

Miss Surma