January 5th-9th Newsletter

^{Happy New Year and welcome back to school.  I hope that your holidays were fun and enjoyable.  It is good to have you back at school and I am looking forward to finishing off the rest of the school year with you.  We will be pushing a little harder and faster in order to get through the curriculum during the second half of the year.  I hope you are ready to do a lot of new things as we continue on through our 5th grade experience.}

^{Spelling Words}

^{(Spelling words with the prefixes: dis-, pre-, un-)}

^{disappoint, prepaid, unable, disapprove, prerecorded, unbeaten, discover, preset, unhappy, dishonest, preschool, unlimited, disorder, pretest, unsure, preoccupied, undercover, displeasure, distrust, prefer}

^{Alternate List}

^{unable, discover, preset, unhappy, pretest, unsure, disorder, preschool, dishonest, prefer}

^{Challenge Words}

^{unimportant, uninterrupted, unmistakable, unintentional, prefabricate, preposterous, presumptuous}

^{Learning the States}

^{Starting this week we will be studying the geography of the United States in addition to learning about its history.  This week we will be learning about the New England States that includes: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  The students will be responsible for knowing the location of the state, the capital, and the nickname.  Each Friday we will have a quiz on the states that we are studying that week in addition, we will review the previously learned states.} 

^Capitals:

^{Maine- Augusta}

^{New Hampshire- Concord}

^{Vermont- Montpelier}

^{Massachusetts- Boston}

^{Connecticut- Hartford}

^{Rhode Island- Providence}

^Nicknames:

^{Maine- “The Pine Tree State”}

^{New Hampshire- “The Granite State”}

^{Vermont- “The Green Mountain State”}

^{Massachusetts- “The Bay State”}

^{Connecticut- “The Constitution State”}

^{Rhode Island- “The Ocean State”}

^{Math Tutoring}

^{Tutoring this week will be on Tuesday at 3:30 and Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. I am sorry I am unable to meet after school on Thursday because I have a workshop that I need to attend.}

^Volunteers

 ^{If you are interested in volunteering in our class, please just let me know when you are available and I would be glad to have you help in our class.}

^{Curriculum this week.}

^{Math- Division of decimals.}

^{Language/Writing/Reading-  Writing a creative story.  Utah Writes Project.}

^{Science- Physical and Chemical change.}

^{Social Studies- The American Revolution, New England States Geography}

^{Home Practice of Writing Skills}

^{A great website to utilize at home to improve writing skills is utahcompose.com.}

^{I encourage students to use this site to improve their writing skills.  It is a great tool and gives immediate feedback.  The students know their username and password to access the site at home.  The site includes lessons, videos, and writing opportunities that are immediately scored.    Students are also given the opportunity to revise their writing in order to improve their score on the essays.  As an}

^{incentive I will award 25 extra credit points for every essay that scores 18 or higher.  I ask that you encourage your child to do as much writing as possible.  This is a great tool with a variety of topics to write about for the essays.}

^{Multicultural Night}

^{Multicultural Night will be held on January 29th.  We are looking for people that would like to represent a country.  The night is held in the gym and volunteers set up a booth or table and talk about the traditions and culture of a country.  If you are interested in participating please let the me or the  P.T.A. know.}

^{Contact Information:}

^{steve.greenhalgh@ironmail.org}

^{Home Phone:  586-3095}

^{School Phone: 686-2840}