Kemp - Brazile 4/1

Parents –

 

Good afternoon! We just finished up a math benchmark that will help me gauge the kids' understanding before the Milestones testing when we return. The great thing is they did very well! There were 3 areas of weakness – 1. Geometry (we're working on that now so it should improve after this week's remaining instruction) 2. Coordinate graphing (1/2 confuse the x and y axis) 3. Multi-step multiplication and addition problems (there were several steps and many stopped after first step). I think we've ironed out the coordinate graphing issue after the test, so it's good news that we can use to focus instruction over the next week of class before the big testing.

 

Tomorrow, we have our middle school tours. We'll leave in the morning and return just before lunch. It's fun to watch the kids all nervously walk the halls knowing they'll think they own the place in a year. If you have an appointment scheduled between 9 and 11, we either need to look at rescheduling the appointment or having the student skip the tour.

 

I have officially covered everything for the kids except in Social Studies. We're doubling up on Social Studies so we can cover all the standards before they're tested on it. The county has a pacing guide for the year, but the kids are responsible for the material on the test so I get it all covered before. I set up these units so the vocabulary, people, and events are covered first with more in depth later in the unit. Our lessons will cover it all before testing.

 

In Reading, we just finished Pictures of Hollis WoodsPictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff. So much with inference skills and theme. We'll start on Lois Lowry's Number the Stars after Spring Break.

 

In Writing, we are continuing to support our opinion with facts, along with summarizing.

 

For Math, we're finishing Geometry this week and will work on individual-specific areas of weakness.

 

In Social Studies, we're finishing the Cold War to Present unit Friday (with a test Friday) and also covering Government this week and the week we return from break.

 

In Science, we're using our time to double up the Social Studies this week and the week after the break. At that point we'll have projects that delve deeper into our standards and soon after, we'll preview 6^th grade topics.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Shane Brazile

 

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