Team Update: Week of September 25

Open House: We look forward to seeing all of you at Open House this Thursday, September 28th.  The Badger Team will meet in the cafeteria from 5:00 to 5:45.  

iReady:  Badger students will be taking the Reading iReady test on Monday this week, and the Mathematics section on Tuesday.  We hope to have perfect attendance on those days, to ensure that students complete this work in the time allotted.  Our team has agreed to not assign homework on Monday, so that kids can be sure to get to bed early.  Please encourage your children to fuel up with breakfast, too!  Thanks so much for your help!

Grade Book:   We encourage you to check your child's grades using the family portal.  We are sure that your child can log in.  If you need assistance, please don't hesitate to ask in the office for help with a password.  Additionally, Mrs. Kauffman, our Technology Integration teacher can help you to set up alerts when you visit the lab to sign up for conferences.  

Book Fair: This week Ms. Sand will be running a book fair in the library! Be sure to stop by and check it out. No time to get to the library? Don't worry, click the link for the online store. BOOK FAIR. Ms. Sand will also be in library for both Open House nights this week.

Garden Needs: Badger team is revamping the garden here at Pennichuck.  As you prepare to do your own fall clean up work at your homes, consider making a donation to our team!  We are looking for the following items in good working condition:

• bow rakes 
• metal shovels 
• a wheel barrow
• cultivators and/or hoes (hand or standing)
• trowels

Please no: pitchforks or sickles!

Many hands make light work, so the goal is to have lots of tools to be used by lots of young, energized students!

Class Updates:

Social Studies: This past week we wrapped up our mini unit on Geography. We had our very first mastery assessment on Friday and I was very impressed! Everyone has been doing such a great job so far! This week we will move into a mini unit on Government before we start Ancient Greece. Side note: Keep up with your current events! Make sure that you're watching the news and CNN10!

Science:  We kicked off our first science unit this week.  Students are investigating the phenomenon:  Why are bones hard?  They've done a great job so far!  Look at the pictures to see what they already investigated and figured out.  Next week we will continue our investigations by looking at different types of cells.

Literacy: We are off and running in Literacy class! Students have settled in to the norms of my class, are using the links on their class Google Classroom pages. We have discussed the reading process and are investigating a Junior Scholastic magazine to practice.  They have already completed the first unit of Latin roots and are preparing for the mastery test for the second unit on Friday! Be sure to check out their binders to see all the great work they are doing!

English:  This week in English we have been learning about story structure and focusing in on specific literary elements such as plot, conflict, character, setting, and theme. We read the short story 7th Grade by Gary Soto, and we spent most of the week analyzing this story and making meaning from what we read. This week was also the first week that we started our nightly independent reading. We will be doing some mini-projects with the independent reading books starting next month. Next week we will start discussing figurative language and we will read the poem Oranges by Gary Soto. We will be listening to some music in class to learn how to identify figurative language, and we will use Soto's poem to discuss how to write figurative language. On Friday we will have a unit test on story structure and both pieces by Gary Soto that we have read in class.

Math: We are learning about the constant of proportionality! Don't worry it's a big fancy word for unit rate in the equation y =kx.  If new vocabulary has you in a panic, check out the math notebook or  Google Class.  You will find videos and extra practice for every topic taught also extra copies of the packet and other handouts.  There will be a quiz on Friday 9/29 make sure to study!