Happy New Year, Students!
I hope that you had a restful and fun Christmas vacation, and are ready for the downhill ride toward 6th grade! We have a great deal to learn before the end of May, so put on your goggles and helmets for the ride!
These next three weeks, we will be finishing up the Native Americans of Central and South America and their encounters with the Spanish explorers, Cortez and Pizarro. Then, we'll be ready to briefly discuss French colonization in the New World, and finally. . . the British and the 13 Colonies. Since our next novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, takes place during the era of British colonization, we will wait for several weeks to begin reading it.
In the meantime, we will be reading several primary source documents and some legends, short stories and poems. You will have several writing assignments each week that you may not be able to finish in class that will be homework. There will be no assigned reading, but you will still need to be reading 30 minutes each night from a book of your choice.
We will also be concentrating on some of the more confusing grammatical issues in the English language. This week, we will discuss the differences between punctuating plurals and possessives. Our spelling list, which is below, will be taken from that grammar lesson. There are 30. . . yes, 30 words. But before you faint, look them over--they're really easy and should be review words in most cases. Your test will be Monday, January 9.
We will also spend this semester practicing our cursive writing. My goal is to bring my only C in elementary school up to an A--and learn to write in cursive! One is never too old to learn, right?
See you tomorrow!
SPELLING LIST for Test on Monday, January 7, 2012
echo, echoes
hero, heroes
auto, autos
memo, memos
potato, potatoes
pimento, pimentos
veto, vetoes
tomato, tomatoes
man, men
woman, women
fungus, fungi
thief, thieves
species, species
medium, media
person, people
