OPEN HOUSE REMINDER TUES JAN 31ST

Dear Parents and Students:

You and your family are cordially invited to attend May Watts School’s Open House on Tuesday, January 31, 2012. We are holding only one Open House this year. To alleviate being overcrowded, we are asking families whose last name begins with “A thru L” attend from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Families whose last name begins with “M thru Z” are requested to attend from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

This is an excellent opportunity for you and your family to see your children's work, meet your child's teacher and see your school. All members of our support staff will also be available for you to visit. Please be sure to stop by and visit with them. Due to the informal nature of the night, it will not be possible to conduct parent/teacher conferences. Our next conference date is Tuesday, February 21st, or you can call the teacher anytime to schedule a meeting.

There will not be a Book Fair during Open House this year. We will be holding the Book Fair in March and more information will be forthcoming.

Please remember to check our "Lost & Found" which will be on display in the Office hallway during the evening. Any items not claimed this evening will be donated to a charity.

We will open all outside building doors in order for you to enter the building so that you may park in the rear of the building. Come on in. We are looking forward to your visit.


Sincerely,


May Watts Staff

Curricular Update (Week of 1/17-1/20 and important reminders

Welcome back to the new year! Here is an update for the upcoming week. The 5th graders as usual, will be productive:

Citizenship: Students will study empathy on Tuesday during our empathy lesson. We will study this in context of classroom/school wide events that we can apply to our learning.

Reading: 5th graders are understanding the rationale for why inventions are created. We have examined videos and literature and had discussions as a part of this. We continue to study vocabulary and practice reading comprehension and fluency strategies as part of think aloud lessons. We learned the word "rationale" last week as part of our challenging vocabulary lesson. Students will also continue the reading and writing connection through our read and respond Blackboard posts. Our short think aloud lessons for vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension instruction provide students with the framework for attacking their reading just before they read silently.

Writing: We are doing a couple of things in writing. One project involves using A LOT of writing crafts that we are studying. We are studying how to elaborate, how to use diverse voices in our writing, and the other craft includes using figurative language. You'll see the project at open house! We are also going to continue our debate topic writing and blogging but that will be next week or the week after-so stay tuned for that. Actually, our essay writing will resume later this week and next week and we'll build upon some of the skills we've already learned in class. Grammar will continue to be a focus with parts of speech and good practice with our sentence fluency and sentence parts.

Math 5V:

Regular math: Students in regular math are finishing unit 6 this week and will study sample size data, probability, fraction computation, and more fraction strategies with how to find common denominators.

Accel math: Students in accel math have finished unit 5 and will begin unit 6. There is a test on Tuesday. Unit 6 involves concepts such as orders of operations, computation with positive and negative numbers, as well as studying number sentences, and algebra concepts.

Both groups will have lessons in real life math and study concepts and strategies that can be applied to everyday math outside of school (think calorie counting, shopping, gas mileage, etc...) and both groups will continue to study math essays and how to write a math essay in order to describe the thinking process behind the problem completed.

Science: Students in science will study some concepts of electricity including how series and parallel circuits are made and how they work. We will study words like current, resistance, and short circuit as part of our lessons.

Important Reminders:

T: 1/17: Vaid helpers before school, no after school Vaid activities, yearbook group photos for clubs and band/orchestra, accelerated math test-unit 5. Robert Crown fieldtrip note will go home today.

W: 1/18: Late start Wednesday. Vaid helpers and small group reading after school till 420pm.

Th: 1/19: Vaid helpers after school.

F: 1/20: Report cards come home.