Prokop's Press                            

Dear Parents and Students,                             Nov. 2, 2007

Welcome to November! Where have nine weeks gone? I cannot believe that the first reporting period is upon us, although I do know we have been working very hard. Starting Nov. 13th,  the days will go quickly by, as all days are minimum days with dismissal being at 1:30. Reminder, that Nov. 12th is Veterans' Day, a school holiday.

Math: Work with chapter three begins for my math group, finding percentages, ratios, mean, median, and mode.

Social Studies: The study of the development of agriculture which will lead to the first true civilizations continue. Next week we will learn about the Mayan. Students are working through a very important study skill in creating note cards as we read through the text and supporting details.

Language Arts:  Language arts continues to center around the novel we are reading, Journey to Topaz. The past weeks utilized our class web page and connected to a student link. We completed an activity researching about the internment camp "Manzanar". It gave us a much clearer picture of what the characters in the book were going through based on actual historical events. I am impressed with the Literature log entries the students have been completing. They really show they are connecting to the literature. This week we took our theme test from our "Courage" unit. I will be sharing the results with you at parent conferences. We will be moving on to the next unit, called "What Really Happened?"

On Thursday, students wrote an essay that was part of the district wide writing prompt. I will also be scoring it, and will later share the district results when they come in.

Spelling/Vocabulary: Next week we will take a break from prefixes and look at homophones.

Art Masters: Next week we are fortunate to have another art lesson from Mrs. DonFrio on the famous artist, Rembrandt.

Halloween: Thank you to Mrs. Renken for the yummy apples and Ashley who also brought in a fun treat. Hopefully everyone had a safe and happy Halloween.

Can Food Drive: Monday starts our can food drive. It will run Nov. 5th-16th. Cans will be collected and delivered to the needy families in our area. This has always been a great success, and we really would appreciate your help in making this a year that even beats last year's totals. I know the students are revved to bring in the most cans in the upper grade. Let's go!!

Report Cards/Teacher Conferences:  Attached is your parent conference time. If you signed up at Back To School Night then it is just a reminder. If you were unable to sign up I assigned you a date and time. If the time assigned doesn’t work for you, just send me an e-mail or send me a note and I’ll give you a call to reschedule it.

Friday Folders: I am keeping many of the students' corrected papers to share with you at conference time, so the folders are quite empty. I look forward to meeting with each of you.

                                                       Have a great weekend,
                                                                                            Mrs. Prokop