Good Morning,

The students are doing a wonderful job understanding systems and routines and really doing well transitioning into middle school. We will begin our first ELA unit on Overcoming Adversity and the  study of Steve Jobs on Wednesday. During this unit the students will study Steve Job's commencement speech in 2005 and various other pieces of text. We will read "Mother to Song"by Langston Hughes, "Letters of Wilbur Wright" by Wilbur Wright, and "The Story of David and Goliath" from the Bible. The students will work on many different reading strategies but here is a list of a few: picking out the central idea, having a fishbowl discussion, stating a claim and finding evidence in the text to support it. They will end the unit with writing a compare and contrast essay. Comparing and contrasting the central idea in Steve Job's Stanford commencement address and J.K. Rowling's Harvard commencement address.

The students will be assigned an Adventure Book Bag Project this week. They will need to pick an adventure book and read it by October 31st. Then they will have to use a paper bag and follow the directions that are on the assignment. Please look for this assignment sheet as it will come home and need a guardian signature this week. The paper bag and presentations will start November 8th.

In Social Studies we are learning all about the Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization. The students have a list of vocabulary words that they should be practicing and going through at home. I have a test tentatively planned for Tuesday October 3rd. They have notes that even if not assigned they should be reviewing daily so they are prepared for the test.

Thank you and as always please contact me with any concerns,
Mrs. Bonner