Rockhopper Weekly Reminders
April 30 - May 4
Mark Your Calendars:
- PSCO Survey is live and ready to be completed (here is the link): https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PSCO
- Monday, May 7- STAR testing begins for Rockhopper students
- Friday, May 11 - STAR testing is completed for Rockhopper students
- Monday- Friday, May 14-18 STAR testing makeup
Volunteers Needed:
Dear Parents,
Below is a letter from Judy Shultz our Rockhopper Art Teacher. She is asking for volunteers to help get student art ready for Open House. If you are able to help, please email your family room teacher as soon as possible.
We are quickly wrapping up our art lessons and getting ready for our Open House art show. I'm really looking forward to seeing your students artwork on display in the multi-purpose room!
I'm emailing to ask for your help. I'd like to find one or two parent volunteers from each classroom who can help me in one of the following two ways:
1.My biggest need is for one parent from each class to take artwork home to mount and label before the art show. I will choose 2 pieces of art per student and provide instructions, labels, and mounting paper. I would have the artwork ready to go home with a parent shortly after your next lesson. (Scourkes/Roels 5/11, Domingues/Regosin 5/18, and Lu/Gokhale 6/1).
My second biggest need is for volunteers who can drop in for 30 minutes or more on Monday 6/4 to help me hang the art show. We will be stapling all the work to the black display boards and setting out the clay on display tables.
As for taking down the show, I would love to have one class come and help me for about 20-30 minutes on Thursday or Friday afternoon 6/7 or 6/8. Students would be carefully taking out staples and sorting the artwork with me.
If you send me names and emails of available parents, I will follow up with each of them. Thanks so much for your help!
PSCO Survey:
Last week there was a link in your Weekly Reminders to complete the PSCO survey, which relates to PSCO specific questions (this is not the SSC/School survey that you took earlier this year). We would appreciate it if you were to take a few minutes to answer this short survey, so that PSCO can get your feedback. The link is at the top of this reminder under the “Mark Your Calendar” section.
Science Night:
The flyer for Science night was sent home last week. If you are interested, please be sure to sign up right away as it is on a first come, first serve basis. We hope to see you there!
Curriculum Flash!
Language Arts:
Our reading of the novel Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes will be completed this week. Class discussions are emphasized in order for students to share opinions, predictions, background knowledge, and character analysis. We also practice deeper thinking in our written response questions, research skills with our “About Japan” study sheet, and creative connections through poetry composition and poetry comparisons, vocabulary cards, and hirakana character formation.
Math
4th grade: Our focus for this week is probability. We’ll be covering the written material in our textbooks to prepare for our exciting Game Factory unit. Concepts that we review and explore include the basic terminology of probability, determining the probability of particular events, making predictions, and representing outcomes using grids, tree diagrams, charts, and fractional terms. We’ll have a Chapter Review/Test at the end of the week to assess our understanding.
5th grade: This week we finish our graphing unit and begin our study of geometry. We’ll be classifying and adding angles, working with lines and line segments, and classifying and measuring triangles and quadrilaterals.
Science:
In Rooms 20 & 21, we continue our investigation of the factors that influence our planet. We will also use half of our time this week to get planning and research done on our Water Planet tech projects. We’ll be working both inside and outside of the classroom to have research done and a sensible plan for our groups to share the information with our peers. The investigation focus this week is on understanding the importance of controlling variables in experimental circumstances, using graphing to record results accurately, and getting more exposure to the force of gravity.
As a reminder, fifth graders can prepare to take their STAR science test by reviewing concepts they have learned over the past two years. Science textbooks and student notebooks for the past two years are available for this purpose.
Social Studies:
This week we will continue to read and discuss the early New England settlers. We’ll be focusing on the events in Europe that lead to the voyage of the Mayflower and the development of both the Pilgrims and the Puritans. We’ll be reading about how these early settlers worked with and interacted with the Native Americans with both positive and negative consequences.
Name that State!
- This state used to be an independent nation.
- The state's name comes from a native word that means "homeland."
- Two active volcanoes can be found in this state.
- It was the last state to join the United States.
- This state is made up of eight islands.
- Which state is it?
