Important Dates

• Thursday, November 11th - Two Hour Early Release 
• November 24th, 25th, & 26th - Thanksgiving Break

Language Arts

What are we learning?

• The student will adjust their thinking based on how the author presents and organizes information in order to understand the information and messages the author is communicating.
• The student will evaluate their theories against other texts and media to create new understandings about the world and take action.
• The student will use literary or narrative techniques to enhance the readers’ understandings of the information and develop their message. 
• The student will seek out community members who can provide support on specific aspects of their writing or process.

Home/School Connection

• Ask your student the following questions:
• How can you evaluate the reliability of a nonfiction text?
• What are other perspectives on this topic?
• How can my decisions as a writer impact the reader’s understanding?

Math

What are we learning?

• The student will compare and order positive rational numbers and integers.
• The student will identify, represent, and describe integers and the absolute value of integers.
• The student will recognize and represent patterns with whole number exponents and perfect squares.

Home/School Connection

• Find a variety of decimals, percents, and fractions and work with your student to put them in order from least to greatest. 
• Compare holiday sales to see which one is the better deal.
• Ask your student to draw out the first 10 perfect squares to teach you the concept!

Social Studies

What are we learning?

• The student will be able to describe the motivations for, obstacles to, and accomplishments of the Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English explorations.
• The student will be able to describe cultural and economic interactions between Europeans and American Indians that led to cooperation and conflict, with emphasis on the American Indian and European concept of land.

Home/School Connection

• Ask your student the following questions:
• Why are people motivated to explore new lands?
• What impact does exploration have on the people who already live on those lands?
• What kind of impact can trade have on the relationships between cultural groups?
• How do today’s technological advancements impact current exploration of the world?

AAP Content

Patterns of Weather, Relationships, & Interdependence

In this unit, students will begin exploring our new concept for quarter 2, patterns. We will examine how patterns of  human behavior have varying degrees of impact on Earth’s surface and how with careful planning, the impact can be controlled. Students will learn that we create models to develop and/or clarify explanations, demonstrate patterns, trends, relationships, and to solve needs. Focusing on Science, we will explore how Earth’s weather systems have cycles and patterns that allow us to make predictions. In Language Arts we will focus on patterns in non-fiction texts and how they can help us understand and informational topics. Students will analyze the patterns of language to construct power, position and perspective. 

We will begin Caesar’s English this week. Students will review 10 latin stems they learned in 4th grade. The stems for the week are: bi, sub, de, pre, super, un, inter, semi, dis, and sym. There will be a quiz on Friday, November 8th.

Advanced Math: 

Real Numbers and Exponents (Current Unit)

• Students will develop an understanding of and flexibility with multiple representations of functions that model a multiplicative or additive relationship.
  • Topics covered include:
    • Square Roots and Perfect Squares
    • Absolute Value of Rational Numbers
    • Negative Exponents of Powers of Ten
    • Scientific Notation
• We will have a test on Unit 3 this week (Wednesday or Thursday). A Study Guide will be introduced and sent home tomorrow (Tuesday, November 9th). Students can also find a Unit 3 Choice Board on Schoology to help them review.

Expressions, Equations, & Inequalities (Beginning next week)

• In our next unit, students will continue learning from previous grade levels about applying properties of real numbers to expressions, equations, and inequalities. A key concept is the consideration of equations as balanced systems. Additionally, they will explore inequalities as imbalanced systems, applying ideas about relationships and the applications of operations with real numbers to uncover the value, or set of values, that a particular variable might be.

Click here to see what students are learning in Specials!