Altogether Now

Here is this week in bullet points, as of this writing:

• We will be working on our writing with a bit of focus this week. In fact, our focus will be focusing in on a longer writing's topic. A couple of our journal entries will involve this idea. I'm glad this is part of our writing curriculum this year, because it sure can be a bear trying to teach that mid-year. 
• This week, we will not have spelling nor a spelling test. We are going to have a short list (short as in five) Latin roots. We will learn what each one means, and we will also discuss how this stem is used commonly in words today. The kids will all need to know two modern uses of this Latin root, as well as the root's meaning, for a quiz on Friday. [Ex: com means "together"; two words using this root are combine and community.]
• We will be reading a pretty harrowing story about life in a refugee camp this week. This is a nonfiction work from the kids' reading books. I read through it earlier today and it's really interesting. 
• For Science, we are going to focus on the various states of matter this week. I decided to nix Social Studies for the remainder of this week so that we can focus on this Science unit. This isn't a real heady unit, so I'm looking to get this one taught and quizzed (at least the first half of this unit) by the middle of next week. At least they get to do some kind of fun experiments, and isn't that what Science should be all about?
• MY MATH CLASS: We will have two more lessons in this unit, then I will give the kids a practice test on Thursday to do in class, and anything left over will be done at home. Kids will come in the next day with any questions before we take the test. The test for chapter one will be this Friday.