Weekly Reminders 3/9/09

Dear Parents and Portal Students,
We hope you had a relaxing weekend! Please take a few moments to read and enjoy the weekly reminders below as we continue to update and add new information each week!

Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences Scheduled!
In the Thursday envelope last week, the students received the conference date scheduling information. We would truly appreciate it if you made every effort to try to come at the scheduled time. However, if you do have a conflict, please contact the office to reschedule as soon as possible. Thank you!

Portal Enrichment Program
We will be offering our Portal Enrichment Program (PEP) during our April 2009 Spring Recess break; April 6 – 10, 2009 and April 13 - 17, 2009.

PEP is a wonderful, multi-age enrichment program for Murdock-Portal students only. You can choose to have your child in the program for one week or both weeks with an option of half-day or full day.

Possible enrichment activities include: Manners with Old Fashion Games, Cooking, Paper Mache, Dramatic Game/Play, Multi-Cultural Activities, Painting, Drawing, Spring Arts and Crafts, Science Related Activities and Computer Related Activities.

Please remember that staffing is dependent on the number of student enrollment.


A message from the yearbook staff:

Please order your yearbook today.  The 72-page full-color yearbook is a wonderful way to preserve your child’s memories at Murdock-Portal.   The deadline for ordering the yearbook has been extended to March 31, 2009.   Extra order forms can be obtained from the office. The cost of the yearbook is $18.00. 
Pictures needed for Yearbook

Please share your “Kodak” moments with us.  Please e-mail pictures of field trips, plays or any other pictures taken at school events to Michelle Wissig at wissigfam@comcast.net.   Please help us make the yearbook a “memorable” one. 

Thank you,
YB Coordinators


Current Academics:

Language Arts:

The finish of Island of the Blue Dolphins draws near! We'll be finishing
our reading of this great book in the next two weeks, and we'll continue to assess our understanding of the text through vocabulary work, comprehension checks, and writing responses to the literature. When we bring this book study to a close, we'll be starting our last core literature book of the year, the realistic fiction novel entitled Bridge to Terabithia. We have copies of this book at school, but we are short a few books for our students. If you have a copy of this great book at home (maybe an older brother or sister had one), please send it to school with your son or
daughter as soon as possible; this will allow us to see if any additional
books will be needed from local libraries or other sources. Thank you!

Oral Presentations:

On March 17-18, students will be presenting their favorite book
from the past trimester’s Reading Contract. As you probably know, this is a very fun way for Rockhoppers to gain more experience in the public speaking realm! Kids will come as the main character (complete with costume and props), and they will share either a brief summary or a specific scene from the book, acting as if they were this character. Students are limited to 2-3 minutes for these presentations, and at this point in the year, they are encouraged to have their dialogue memorized (although effective note card use is still an option.) Ask your son or daughter to give you a “preview” of their book- it will be good practice for them, and an enjoyable experience for you!

Math:
Our unit test on statistics, graphing, and coordinate planes is this Friday. Reviewing concepts like mean, median, mode, and range, along with the idea of ordered pairs to describe a point, is especially recommended. We will start work on Geometry and Measurement the following week.

5th graders continue to study fractions, percentages, and decimals. We are learning how all of these concepts are related and how to move easily between the three.
Our Bedroom projects were turned in on Friday, and they are WONDERFUL! Full of creativity, effort, and art. Well done, 5th graders.

The math placement test for middle school, Level 1 will be on March 19. This is a test of general knowledge and skills that 5th graders should know. All schools in the district will be taking the test this week, and no middle school expects any school to have covered the entire curriculum for the year, since there are still three months left in school. The students received a review package today, that they will be working on in class over the next couple of weeks. The Level 2 test will be given to students on March 31. This test is basically used to determine if a student is ready to skip all of sixth grade math , which VERY few are. Students should not get overly stressed about the assessments. The placements that are determined are usually just right for the child to be successful in their math class in middle school. The middle schools will notify students in the mail. If a parent feels that their child has been incorrectly placed, they may discuss the placement with the middle school. Also, students are reassessed every year to determine correct placement.

Social Studies:

In social studies, we are moving into the “Mexican California” era of our history. During this unit, students will be making a diseno, which is a land grant map of the time. Thank you for the donations of grocery bags!

Science:

We will be finishing, as much as possible, our Environments unit
this week. Our assessments for this unit have consisted of formal responses to investigation situations that our integrated into our studies. I will also be checking science notebooks for organization (dated work) and level of participation in our activities. Our next unit will be Electricity &
Magnetism. Our Science Fair project continues on as well, with our second
half of the scientific method write-up due on March 18. This portion of the
formal write-up will contain the results of their experiment and their
interpretation of these results, otherwise known as the conclusion! Please check with your student to make sure they have shared their results in a clear format (chart, graph, detailed notes), and that they have thought about how their results relate to their original question and hypothesis.


Important Dates to Remember:

March 12 - Fitnessgram testing 5th graders
March 13 - GATE testing (during Specialist time)
March 13 - 4th Grade Math Unit test
March 16 - Learning Day - No school for students
March 17 -18 Oral Presentations
March 18 - Science Fair Project Conclusions and Results due
March 18 - Middle School Counselors coming to talk to 5th graders
March 19 - Date Change! Math Placement Test - 5th grade. Level 1.
March 19 - March 27 Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences -
EARLY DISMISSAL -12:30. Students must attend conferences with parents.

CALIFORNIA TRIVIA!
Q: At which mission was the altar painted by an American sailor who had jumped ship?


Good luck!

Mr. Roels & Miss Scourkes