Halloween was a little wild and fun as usual. It is always so great to see the whole school come together to embrace the craziness and strut their stuff during the parade. We are excited to have a fairly “normal” week this week.

Please remember there is no school on Monday, November 11. The second trimester will begin Tuesday, November 12, and information regarding access to student report cards should be coming out from all Lower School teachers toward the end of next week. If you have not yet accessed your Veracross parent portal, you might want to search your email for information from Terri Kuckuck, our network administrator, with directions and your login information.

Here’s what we have in store this week in our academic classes:

Reading: This week, we’ve been working with a smaller chunk of Holes (albeit one with quite a cliffhanger) in order to prep the students for their last quiz of the trimester. For this quiz, they’ll need to be familiar with the main events from chapters 16-32; a vocabulary list compiled by the students themselves; and be able to recognize and explain relevant literary terms (such as setting, themes, and symbolism) from these chapters. As the students prepare themselves, they may ask you to help with flashcards or other effective studying techniques–we definitely invite and encourage the help!

Lastly, a number of students are opting to memorize a poem to recite in class over the next two weeks. This is a purely optional task, but we’re so glad to see that a majority of our students are taking the initiative to give this a try. As they practice and commit the lines, rhymes, and imagery to memory over the next several days, we’re sure they’d love to have you and your family as preliminary audiences.

Math: While a few students are still wrapping up their work with long division, we are charging ahead this week as we conquer the order of operations. I challenged the students today to ask the adults in their lives what comes to mind when they hear “order of operations”. My suspicion is the first thing that will pop into everyone’s head (if you have grown up in the United States) would be “P.E.M.D.A.S.” or “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”.

That mnemonic device was ingrained in my head for so many years. I doubt I am alone! We had a good time talking about several problems that have gone around on social media over the past few years. This problem caused a discussion with myself and a handful of other adults that occupied us during a stressful time for well over an hour. What answer do you get? Check with your children to hear what all the confusion is about!

I must also point out that I have noticed many students struggle with organizing their work neatly, with labeled problem numbers, in a very orderly fashion on a sheet of notebook paper. While the mathematics lesson is important, the ability to successfully master this organizational skill is crucial. It will serve them well in sixth grade math and beyond as they have to prove and show steps in algebra and beyond.

Science: This week in science we are continuing our unit on the scientific method. We started a lab on Friday which we completed today. The rest of this week we will focus on understanding the difference between scientific observations, inferences, and opinions. A key component of understanding scientific observations will be differentiating between qualitative and quantitative observations.

Have a wonderful rest of this week!

Kimberly & Tim