Important Dates & Reminders

• The first bell for school is at 8:45 and the late bell is at 8:50.
• Dismissal starts at 3:35.
• Free breakfast and lunch will be offered this year. 
• Please call the front office if your child will be late, absent or leaving early from school.
• Students must wear a mask to school and it must be on all day except for eating and drinking.
• Students can bring a snack from home and we will eat it during our snack / mask break in the afternoon.
• Students need to bring their COMPUTER and CHARGER home with them each day and bring it back to school the next day.

• February 2nd - 2nd Quarter Report Cards go home
• February 8th - 24th WiDA Testing for ESOL students
• February 21st - NO SCHOOL Presidents Day
• March 11th - Jamestown Field Trip (More information to come)!

Language Arts

In Writing, we have finished our Nonfiction featured articles about a topic of their choice. The students did an amazing job of picking a topic they knew a lot about, and highlighting a feature in that topic. We are now focusing on writing our own 3 paragraph fiction stories with characters and a setting. We are editing our writing to make sure we have correct punctuation, and our stories have a conflict and a resolution. For Reading, we started our Historical Fiction unit. We are listening to stories from the past based on true events where the characters are made up. We are listening to the story, “Number the Stars” about a Danish girl living in World War II and her troubles and experiences being a child during that time. Students are learning how the setting of a story will impact the characters choices and feelings.

Math

This month we started our Decimals unit. Students are learning about the place value of decimals, tenths, hundredth and thousandths. We are learning how to compare decimals up to the thousandths and more than 1 whole. We are also going to learn how to represent decimals as fractions, solve computation (add/sub) problems with decimals and solve word problems involving decimals. We will be sending a review sheet before our Decimals test on February 4th. After Decimals, we will be learning about Multiplication and Division - part 2.

Advanced Math

This month we started our Fraction computation unit. Students are learning to add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators. While solving complex word problems, students are developing fraction fluency while they continue to represent fractions as models, improper fractions, and mixed numbers. Next up: algebraic reasoning!

Science

This month, we finished our Ecosystem unit. We learned about the parts of a flower, flower reproduction and pollination, and seeds. We also learned about the weather and climate, how scientists collect and measure weather data with various types of weather tools, and also learned about the different types of weather and cloud formation. This week we will start our new unit in Science - Oceans! Students will learn about how pollution will affect our oceans, organisms, how humans interact with one another & with the nonliving components in the ecosystem, understand that the ocean environment has characteristics and that Virginia has important natural resources.

Social Studies

We will start our new Social Studies unit in the middle of February - The American Revolutionary war we will explore the reasons why the colonies went to war with Great Britain and how their path to revolution connects to our modern world.