Pleasant Valley School

News from Miss Sheets

Thank you everyone for attending our fall field trip and Harvest Festival. The students had a great time!

Snow Gear: The autumn season is changing quickly. Snow will be here before we know it. Please start getting ready to bring snow gear. Students may take gear back and forth or leave it at school. If they need to bring it home, please let me know so I can remind them in the afternoon. Students will need: warm boots, snow pants, cold weather coat, hat, waterproof gloves or mittens. Also, to help keep our floor clean from mud and dry from snow, students are not allowed to wear boots in the classroom. Students will need to bring shoes or slippers to change into.

Picture Day: Class and individual pictures are scheduled for November 12th at 10:00 am. Order forms will be sent home on Monday, November 4th and are due back on picture day.

Parent - Teacher Conferences: Conferences are November 22. Please click below to complete a Google Form to let me know when you would like to come visit and learn about all the wonderful things that your student is doing at school.

Book Orders: Holiday book orders are due by November 28. Due to the short time period, I do not submit orders during December. Please let me know if you are ordering gifts and I can keep them a surprise. Our class code is LC2V8.

Secret Santa: It's almost that time again. I will be putting together the Secret Santa information prior to Thanksgiving. If you wish for your student to not participate, please let me know by November 20th.

View the newsletter in a web browser to view larger images.

Parents please share photos for the yearbook or copy any of your students that you wish to save. Above is a link to our shared Google Drive folder. Please don't delete any photos.

ELA State Testing Day for 3rd - 7th grade

Photo Video is coming to take our photos this year. Forms are coming home on Monday, November 4th. One form per student when ordering photos.

All Grades: Math, Reading, and Science

Report cards delivered at Parent Teacher Conferences.

https://forms.gle/2F57HGfmjLkicHV29

Thanksgiving Break

Mark your calendars for our annual holiday program and dinner.

What are we learning in reading is listed following the individual grade levels by their program colors. If you do not know which color your student is in, please ask Miss Sheets.

Math

Unit 3: Geometry: Naming, Comparing, and Building Shapes

Science

Topic 4 - Earth's Weather

How does the weather change?

Topic 1 - Pushes and Pulls

What happens if you push or pull an object?

Social Studies

Topic 2 - National and State Symbols

Big Question - What does it mean to be American?

Topic 3 - Work Now and Long Ago

Big Question - How have jobs changed over time?

Arts

In art, we will be headed to the rainforest and working with markers. Our final project will be a warm and cool color inspired caiman.

In music, we are working on dynamics and chords. By the end of the month, we will be working on our holiday music.

Math

Unit 2: Numbers Within 100: Addition, Subtraction, Time, and Money

Unit 3: Numbers Within 1,000: Place Value, Addition, and Subtraction

Science

Topic 2 - Changing Matter

Essential Question: How do you change materials?

Social Studies

Topic 2 -People, Places, and Nature

Big Question: What is the World Like?

Topic 3 - Government

Big Question: How does government work?

Arts

In art, we will be headed to the rainforest and working with markers. Our final project will be working with line patterns to create a treefrog.

In music, we are working on dynamics and chords. By the end of the month, we will be working on our holiday music.

Math

Unit 2: Multiplication and Division: Concepts, Relationships, and Patterns

Science

Topic 2 -Electricity and Magnetism

Essential Question: How can you solve a problem with magnetic forces?

Social Studies

Topic 3 - Communities Build a Nation

Essential Question: How does our past affect our present?

Arts

In art, we will be headed to the rainforest and working with markers. Our final project will be working with line patterns to create a treefrog.

In music, we are working on dynamics and chords. By the end of the month, we will be working on our holiday music.

Math

Unit 2: Operations: Multiplication, Division, and Algebraic Thinking

Unit 3: Multi-Digit Operations and Measurement: Multiplication, Division, Perimeter and Area

Science

Topic 2 - Human Uses of Energy

Essential Question: How do we convert energy to meet our needs?

Social Studies - Montana: A History of Our Home

Unit 2: Montana's First People

Essential Questions:

• What was Montana like before the first non-Indians arrived?

• Who called Montana home and how did they live?

Arts

In art, we will be headed to the rainforest and working with markers. Our final project will be working with line patterns and color overlay to create a jungle jaguar.

In music, we have complete the squire and knight levels. We are starting to learn new notes with Lords and Ladies. This section will lead into working on our holiday music. On independent study days, they are learning to play performance tracts on the piano.

Math

Unit 3: Numbers and Operations: Multiply and Divide Rational Numbers

Reading - Middle School ELA

7B: Character & Conflict

Plays and short stories both provide a magnified view of characters responding to conflict, which makes them a great vehicle for middle graders exploring these elements. Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark play A Raisin in the Sun is grounded in a nuanced, deeply compassionate understanding of how people facing hardships can inflict harm they never intend on the people around them. Both the play and story provide students with rich opportunities to observe the growth and change of characters whose motivations are often hidden, even from themselves.

Texts

• A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
• "Harlem" by Langston Hughes
• Excerpt from To Be Young, Gifted and Black: An Informal Autobiography of Lorraine Hansberry by Lorraine Hansberry

Skills and Content

• Topic & Theme: Individual dreams, family dynamics, and societal restrictions
• Reading: Analyze a character’s unconscious motivations
• Writing: Make thematic connections across genres
• Activity Highlights: Perform scenes, analyze film, compare historical and fictional portrayals
• Text Features: Mid-20th century African-American drama

Sensitive Content

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun depicts the life of an African-American family coping with poverty and racism in Chicago in the 1950s. The characters speak in the vernacular, and occasionally use terms students may find offensive. This text deals with racism, and students might be upset by the ways in which the family’s dreams are thwarted by overt and institutional racism.

Science - Middle School Course 2

Topic 3 - Growth and Reproduction

Essential Question: What factors influence the growth of organisms and their ability to reproduce?

Social Studies - Middle School American History

Topic 5: The Early Republic (1789-1825)

Essential Question: How much power should the federal government have, and what should it do?

Topic 6: The Age of Jackson and Westward Expansion (1824-1860)

Essential Question: Why do people move?

Arts

In art, we will be headed to the rainforest and working with markers. Our final project will be working using all the marker skills taught during this unit to create a rainforest landscape.

In music, we are continuing to learn the violin. Independent study day will continue to focus on learning the guitar and introduction to music theory.

Skills 4:

In this unit eight sounds are introduced, along with the most common way of spelling each sound.

The eight sounds and corresponding spellings are:

1. /n/ spelled ‘n’ as in man
2. /h/ spelled ‘h’ as in hat
3. /s/ spelled ‘s’ as in sit
4. /f/ spelled ‘f’ as in fan
5. /v/ spelled ‘v’ as in van
6. /z/ spelled ‘z’ as in zigzag
7. /p/ spelled ‘p’ as in pig
8. /e/ spelled ‘e’ as in pen

The two new Tricky Words are: a and the.

Knowledge 3: Stories

This domain will introduce students to classic stories that have been favorites with children for generations. Students will become familiar with stories like “The Three Little Pigs,” “Chicken Little,” and “The Bremen Town Musicians.” They will meet memorable characters like Goldilocks and the Billy Goats Gruff. Students will also learn about trickster tales and how smaller characters can outwit larger, stronger characters. In addition, two of the read-alouds—“Momotaro, Peach Boy” (a Japanese folktale) and “The Story of Jumping Mouse” (a Native American legend)—will help students develop an appreciation for fiction from other cultures.

Skills 3:

This unit is devoted to introducing spelling alternatives for vowel sounds. Vowel sounds and their spellings are the most challenging part of the English writing system. There are only two vowel sounds that are almost always spelled one way. One is /a/, which is almost always spelled ‘a’ as in at. The other is /ar/, which is almost always spelled ‘ar’ as in car. The other sixteen vowel sounds have at least one significant spelling alternative. Several of them have many spelling alternatives.

The sounds and spellings taught in this unit are:

• /ae/ spelled ‘a_e’ (cake), ‘a’ (paper), ‘ai’ (wait), ‘ay’ (day)
• /oe/ spelled ‘o_e’ (home), ‘o’ (open), ‘oa’ (boat), ‘oe’ (toe)
• /ie/ spelled ‘i_e’ (bite), ‘i’ (biting), ‘ie’ (tie)
• /ue/ spelled ‘ue’ (cue), ‘u_e’ (cute), ‘u’ (unit)
• /aw/ spelled ‘aw’ (paw), ‘au’ (Paul), ‘augh’ (caught)

Knowledge 4:

This domain builds on The Ancient Greek Civilizations domain and will introduce students to several well-known Greek myths and many well-known mythical characters. Students will learn that the ancient Greeks worshipped many gods and goddesses, and that the twelve they believed lived on Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, were the most powerful. Students will learn the definition of a myth: a fictional story, once thought to be true that tried to explain mysteries of nature and humankind. They will also learn about myths that include supernatural beings or events, and that myths give insight into the ancient Greek culture. Students will hear about Prometheus and Pandora, Demeter and Persephone, Arachne the Weaver, the Sphinx, and Hercules, among others.

Unit 3 - The Human Body: Systems and Senses

The nonfiction Reader for Unit 3, entitled “How Does Your Body Work?,” consists of selections that will further students’ scientific understanding of the skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems of the human body. The role of various body parts and organs associated with each system, such as bones, joints, muscles, nerves, the spinal cord, and the brain, will be described. Students will also take an in-depth look at the senses of sight and hearing and the various body parts that enable these senses to function properly. The later chapters of the Reader will provide insight into difficulties that may occur when vision and/or hearing are impaired and how people cope with these challenges.

Unit 3: Poetry

For many readers—adults and children alike—poetry can be challenging. Readers often find poems inaccessible, suspecting a secret meaning they cannot decode. In fact, poetry’s reliance on symbolic and figurative language opens up rather than closes off meaning, giving readers the power of personal interpretation. This unit gives students tools and strategies for approaching poetry, training them in the methods and devices poets use and equipping them to read and interpret both formal and free verse poems. It gives them continual opportunities to create poems themselves, allowing them to practice what they have learned.

The poems in this unit represent a wide variety of time periods, from Kshemendra’s twelfth-century treatise on the responsibilities of poets to the work of living writers such as Sherman Alexie and Harryette Mullen. We haven’t chosen poems written specifically for children; we have instead selected poems both younger and older readers will enjoy. The poets come from many backgrounds and nations; the poets included are European, Asian, African American, Native American, and Hispanic. The poems themselves are similarly diverse; some employ precise meter and rhyme schemes, while others use free verse. Uniting them all is their engagement with language and its potential.

Email: teacher@pvsmt.org
Website: pvsmt.org
Location: 7975 Pleasant Valley Rd, Marion, MT 59925, USA
Phone: 406-858-2343