March: This month we will be reading stories about pioneers traveling west. We will start with the personal narrative, Along the Santa Fe Trail. On the trail we will write letters home describing the trip. We will create "propaganda" posters encouraging other pioneers to travel west. Non-fiction articles such as Children of the Wild West and How They Lived will help us understand how the pioneers felt. The last two weeks of the month we will spend our language period traveling west by computer using Oregon Trail III. Each day we will work with our travel group and write in our trail journals. Take a look at our wagon teams. We will also read and present the play Pecos Bill.

February: We have begun Unit 4 in Explore. The topic is "Catastrophe". We've been reading about volcanoes and earthquakes in Super Science, and in Explore. We will be using the Internet and Encyclopedia to write a report on severe weather. Locally we have only had ice days and snow days. Fortunately the weather was perfect for skiing February 7. (Let's finish our paragraphs and thank you letters.)

January: We finished the Integrated Reading Test for Unit 3 of Explore. We worked on writing to the topic. Some topics included: Firsts, Difference of Opinion, and Changing Places. At the end of the month we will test our writing ability by completing the MEAP writing test. We also began the first five pages in our HyperStudio Yearbooks: two band pages, two science pages, a friends page, a sports page, and a ski page.

December: We continue to write "photo essays" about all types of topics from science experiments to our first band concert. (Check our web pages to see examples)

November: We will be running the Recycle Trailer again. Of course we will be taking photographs and writing about our experiences. As November is Recycle Month we will write business letters and make posters encouraging people to recycle. We also need articles on Safety Patrol. We will take the Integrated Reading (and Language) Test the last week of the month.

October In Science we are learning about vertebrates and invertebrates. We are making formal outlines and using the information to create Venn Diagrams. Next we use that information to write compare/contrast paragraphs for Language Class. Our papers are being graded for three FCA's: good beginning and ending, adequate and correct information, proper sentence structure and grammar. Soon we will be putting some of our better information on the web.
Many of us are learning to take photographs with the Smile Cameras. We all are writing "Photo Essays". Red Ribbon

September 18-29 We will continue to work on our keyboarding daily. We will review the fundamentals of HyperStudio and learn how to add photographs to our presentations. We will write "photo essays" using a photograph taken in at school. We will learn to get these photographs from the Internet web page and transfer them to our essay.

September 5-15 We will begin type 1 and type 2 writing. We will be putting ideas in our Journals. We will spend considerable time working on keyboarding. It is important that we use the correct finger placement and learn to type without looking at our hands.

These groups are writing about Peacemakers. Some comments can be seen on this Peacemaker Page.

This group is seriously examining the process of transpiration. They charted the progress of red water as it went up the celery tubes. Celery We also studied photosynthesis, and reproduction of flowering plants, conifers, moss and ferns.

Science: In the fall we finished the chapters on plant processes, classifying animals, and habitat and environment.

Reading Unit 1: Each group planned an adventure they would enjoy as be began our unit on Adventures. Our first adventure was from the fantasy James and the Giant Peach. Our second adventure was the amazing biography of Arctic Adventurer Matthew Henson. We finished by reading about the Voyager Mission to the four gas planets, and an article about Space Camp. We made group presentations. October 16-18 took the Integrated Reading Tests as we finish our first unit in Language and Reading.

Reading Unit 2: We read a non-fiction article about wolves and fiction story about a fox, and a narrative non-fiction about a falcon. We are expected to pay attention to the author's purpose, as well as fact and opinion.