Central Grade TAG Newsletter
October 30, 2014
Announcements
PARENT –TEACHER CONFERENCES
Upcoming Events
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Thursday, Oct. 30
Central Grade
Halloween Parade 10:15
October 31: No School
November 3: No School
November 4: Election
Day
November 7: Central
Grade Movie Night
November 18: PTO
Meeting in the Library
6:30pm
November 21: First
Trimester Ends (Report
cards go home Dec. 8.)
November 27-28: No
School
December 1-16: NWEA
Testing Window
December 12: Central
Grade Movie Night
December 19 All School
Sing Along
December 22-January
2: Holiday Break, No
School
January 5: School
Resumes
Thank you all for attending parentteacher conferences. We enjoyed
this time to continue making
connections with our current and
new TAG families.
HALLOWEEN CLASS PARTIES
Class parties were a success! Thank
you for your generous
contributions. We appreciate all
that you do to help make our
classrooms fun-filled and fully
supplied.
PARENT MATH NIGHT
Parent Math Night will be held
Thursday, November 6 from 6:007:00 p.m. in Julie Clark's classroom
(Room 210 on the second floor).
We will be learning about and
doing the multiplication and
division strategies your child is
investigating this year.
TAG WEBSITE
Please be sure to visit
centralgradetag.weebly.com for
homework assignments,
announcements, calendars, the
most recent newsletter, and other
important, as well as fun links, for
parents and students.
GOOGLEDOCS
All 4th and 5th grade students have
been trained on using
GoogleDocs using their TCAPS
student accounts. Please note
that the use of GoogleDocs at the
elementary level is used for school
use only.
SPELLINGCITY AND TYPING WEB
Students should continue to visit
the spellingcity.com website to
practice each week’s spelling and
vocabulary words. Parents may
access your child’s reports to see
their progress each week.
To practice and enhance typing
skills, all 4th and 5th grade students
will begin using an on-line typing
program. Students have an
account set up through Typing
Web. Central Grade has used this
website in past years.
Page 2
Subject News
TAG Newsletter
Science News: Annette Cole
T·
The students are nearing the end of their
astronomy investigations. During the last portion of
this unit, students will be studying the Solar System
and beyond. Topics include the following: the
Jupiter system, diversity in the Solar System,
categorizing objects in the solar system, scale
models of the Solar System, galaxies, lifespans of
stars, and extrasolar planets.
They are currently working on travel brochures
for a particular Solar System object. The
majority of the work will be done in class, but
anything not finished before Halloween will be
due Tuesday, November 4.
Social Studies News: Ann McDonough
Over the past three weeks, students have learned
about the seven, Native American cultural regions.
During this unit, students focused on identifying the
geographic location of each region, identifying the
environmental factors that promoted cultural
diversity among the Native American groups, and
describing adaptions and natural resources that
were used by each group. Our focus this past week
has been on the Silk Route and understanding it’s
influence on trade and early exploration. The silk
route consisted of several trade routes leading
from China and extending into the Middle East
and Europe. Merchants used this trade route for
trading goods such as silk, porcelain, gold and
ivory. Students will be participating in our very own
Trade Fair. Details will be coming home soon.
Math News: Julie Clark
Fix and Return Option: When students receive a grade on a
math paper that is below approximately 80%
I generally put a note on their paper to fix and return the
assignment for a better grade. I give students half credit (or at
times slightly more) for corrected work. When a student is
missing an entire assignment I put forth extra effort to get this
work turned in. That is not the case for "Fix and Return"
assignments. I leave it up to the student to decide if they are
willing to put forth the extra effort to improve his/her grade. I
do not hound students for corrected work. I ask that
corrected papers are turned in within a week of being sent
home.
Please feel free to touch base with me if your child is
struggling to understand where he/she went wrong and is
unable to fix the assignment. I would be happy to help.
Fifth Grade: Fifth graders started the first unit, Prime Time,
from the sixth grade curriculum. They are working on
finding the Greatest Common Factor, Least Common
Multiple, Prime Factorization & the Distributive Property.
Fourth Grade: Fourth graders are currently on unit
2, Prisms and Pyramids, of the fifth grade curriculum which
has a focus on cubic volume.
Language Arts: Homeroom Teacher
Students will be wrapping up our class novel, Bloomability by Sharon Creech. This novel is about a girl
who is “kidnapped” by her aunt and uncle to attend a prestigious boarding school in Switzerland. This
novel unit has focused on many literary elements and our “patterns of change” theme.
Students will also be strengthening their reading comprehension skills utilizing the William and Mary
reading component entitled, Jacob’s Ladder. This supplement meets the requirements of the
updated Common Core State Standards for Language Arts in both reading and writing. Students will
be reading a variety of genres of literature to enhance their comprehension and literature response
skills. The main components include literary elements, sequence, details, cause and effect,
classification, inference, consequences and implications, generalization, and theme.