Pleasant Valley School

Seasonal change has begun. As the snow begins to melt, things will start to get muddy. Please keep bringing boots or shoes that you don't mind getting wet and muddy at recess. The students still need coats and/or sweatshirts for recess. Even though it is starting to warm into the upper 40's and low 50's the spring wind off the snow is still chilly. Winter gear will be sent home at Spring Break.

March 24-31 is Spring Break! No School all week! School will resume on April 1st on a Tuesday thru Friday schedule. Thank you for being flexible so I can attend my training meeting.

Box Tops: Thank you for scanning your receipts! Our fundraising is up from $262.10 to $291.10.

Happy Birthday to our birthday student!

Great job this year! Here is a look at all your creativity!

St. Patrick's Day is Monday, March 17th. Let's see if we can trap a Leprechaun. Work with your family to create a trap. Bring traps to school on March 13th.

We had lots of fun reading books, playing with Oobleck, and learning about Dr. Seuss.

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.

2nd Trimester MAP Testing for all grades.

St. Patrick's Day is Monday, March 17th. Lets see if we can trap a Leprechaun. Work with your family to create a trap. Bring traps to school on March 13th.

Field trip to Central School Museum and Glacier Art Museum.

No School this week! School Resumes April 1st for a Tuesday - Friday schedule.

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 5: Numbers 11−100: Teen Numbers, and Counting by 1s and 10s

Science

Topic 5 - Needs of Living Things

What do plants and animals need to survive?

Social Studies

Topic 5 - Time and Chronology

How do we track time?

Arts

In art, we are finishing our printing projects. The final project will be a bee flying through printed flowers.

In music, we are working on sharps and flats.

Math

Unit 4: Length: Measurement, Addition and Subtraction, and Line Plots

Science

Topic 5 - Plants and Animals

What do animals and plants need to survive?

Social Studies

Topic 5 - Making a Difference

What makes someone a hero?

Arts

In art, we are finishing our printing projects. The final project will be creating a windmill printed collage.

In music, we are working on sharps and flats.

Math

Unit 4: Fractions: Equivalence and Comparison, Measurement, and Data

Science

Topic 5 - Life Cycles and Traits

How do the traits of living things vary?

Social Studies

Topic 5 - Citizenship and Civic Engagement

How can I participate?

Arts

In art, we are finishing our printing projects. The final project will be creating a rooster scene with printed paper.

In music, we are working on sharps and flats.

Math

Unit 4: Fractions, Decimals, and Measurement: Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication

Science

Topic 4- Earth's Features

Essential Question: How can you use maps to understand Earth's features?

Social Studies - Montana: A History of Our Home

Unit 4 - Montana in the Twentieth Century

Essential Questions:

• Why did homesteaders come to Montana?
• What is assimilation and how did the push for assimilation affect Montana Indians?
• Who immigrated to Montana after 1920?

Arts

In art, we are finishing our printing projects. The final project will be printed goats.

In music, we are starting to work on the recorder dragon level. On independent study days, they are continuing to learn how to play chords on the ukulele.

Math

Unit 6: Geometry: Solids, Triangles, and Angles

Reading - Middle School ELA

7D: Poetry & Poe

In this unit, students learn to read like a movie director. First, they read poems by D. H. Lawrence, Federico García Lorca, and Emily Dickinson to learn to form mental images while reading. Then, they read three texts by Edgar Allan Poe—“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Raven.” They use the rich details from "The Tell-Tale Heart" to create a visual storyboard that helps them understand the curious perspective of the strange, first person narrator in this story. They watch thoughtful, animated adaptations of “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado” and compare the adaptations to the original texts. After reading these stories, students’ knowledge of Poe’s tales allows them to participate in the murder mystery Quest, Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe? , where they investigate a fictitious crime scene, interrogate characters to find and interpret clues, and present their proposed solution to the mystery before the true solution is revealed. At the end of the unit, students write an essay arguing for or against the reliability of the narrator of one of the unit's texts.

For more information, please see caregiver letter on Feb. 18th.

Science - Middle School Course 2

Topic 7 - Human Impacts on the Environment

Essential Question: How does human activity impact Earth's systems?

Social Studies - Middle School American History

Topic 12 - Imperialism and World War 1 (1853-1919)

Essential Question: What is America's role in the world?

Arts

In art, we are finishing our printing projects. The final project will be a printed garden scene.

In music, we are continuing to learn how to play the music for festival on May 16th. Independent study day will continue to focus on learning the guitar and music theory.

Skills 7:

In this unit, six more consonant sounds and the most common spelling for each sound are introduced:

• /ch/ spelled ‘ch’ as in chin
• /sh/ spelled ‘sh’ as in shop
• /th/ (unvoiced) spelled ‘th’ as in thin
• /th/ (voiced) spelled ‘th’ as in them
• /qu/ spelled ‘qu’ as in quit
• /ng/ spelled ‘ng’ as in sing

The six sounds presented in Unit 7 differ from the sounds studied up to this point because all six are generally written with two letters instead of one. English has more than forty sounds and only twenty-six letters. The people who began transcribing English long ago solved this imbalance by using multiletter combinations to represent some sounds.

Tricky Words: up, down, of, in, out

Knowledge 8: Seasons and Weather

This domain will introduce students to the concept of weather. Students will learn that different regions of Earth experience different weather patterns throughout the year. They will also learn that we can think about a year and the related weather patterns in terms of four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Students will also learn why knowing about the weather is important, and how weather affects our daily lives and activities.

Skills 5: Starting Monday, March 17th

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 just one way (/a/ and /ar/). 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:

• /u/ spelled ‘u’ (but), ‘o’ (son), ‘ou’ (touch), ‘o_e’ (come)
• /ə/ (also called the schwa sound) spelled ‘a’ (about), ‘e’ (debate)

In addition to the above sounds and spellings, two sound combinations and their spellings are also taught in this unit. They are:

• /ə/ + /l/ spelled ‘al’ (animal), ‘il’ (pencil), ‘el’ (travel), ‘le’ (apple)
• /sh/ + /ə/ + /n/ spelled ‘tion’ (action)

Knowledge 8: Insects

This domain will introduce students to the largest group of animals on Earth. Students will learn the characteristics of insects, the life cycles of insects, how insects can be categorized as solitary or social, and how insects are viewed as both helpful and harmful. For example, students will learn how insects are important to the process of pollination and in the production of honey, some cosmetics, and even medicines. This domain will lay the foundation for review and further study of the life cycles, habitats, and classifications of insects and other animals.

Unit 6 - The Viking Age

Students will be introduced to the people of the Viking Age: the men, women, and children who spoke the Old Norse language and lived in an area of northern Europe called Scandinavia, the countries we now call Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Students will learn about the culture, region, and everyday life of the Norse people, who made a living through farming, fishing, and trading. Students will also learn about the Viking explorers who traveled across the ocean to settle in new lands, including Greenland, Iceland, and Newfoundland.

Skills:

Reading

The Reader of Unit 6 is Gods, Giants, and Dwarves. The content of this Reader focuses on Norse mythology. These Norse myths, which have been passed down through many generations, complement the Quest for this unit, which presents factual information about the Vikings. Norse gods, goddesses, dwarves, and giants occupied nine worlds. The genealogy of these creatures is rather complex, and this instruction only skims the surface of this vast body of literature.

Spelling

During this unit’s spelling exercises, students will review words with spelling patterns of /k/ spelled ‘c’, ‘k’, ‘ck’, ‘ch’, and ‘cc’ and spelling patterns of /s/ spelled ‘s’, ‘c’, ‘ss’, ‘ce’, ‘se’, ‘st’, and ‘sc’. Students should be familiar with most of these spelling alternatives, as they were taught in Grade 2. Two Challenge Words have been assigned each week. Content Words will continue. Each week, students will have the option of trying to spell a content-related word on the weekly spelling assessment. In this unit, the Content Word will follow the spelling pattern for the week.

Grammar

In grammar, students will continue their study of conjunctions as a part of speech. Students will review the correct usage of the conjunction because, which is used to mean “for this reason” and signals the answer to a “why” question. It signals the cause of something. Students will practice identifying and creating sentences using this conjunction.

Morphology

During the morphology portion of the lessons, students will work with the suffixes –ive and –ly. Students will continue to learn how suffixes change the meaning of root words and how suffixes added to a word can change the part of speech of that word. Students will have opportunities to apply their new knowledge of the changed meanings and parts of speech during workbook practice.

Unit 6: Contemporary Fiction

A key objective of the unit is teaching students to write narrative prose. This allows for creative and imaginative expression but also affords the opportunity to implement the skills students have learned in the reading components of the lessons. Throughout this unit, students will practice using literary elements they have explored in each vignette—for example the use of detailed descriptions, the building of aspiration as a theme, and the contrast between the protagonists’ perceptions and the perceptions of others. The unit asks students to compose a multi-chapter narrative; they build their stories throughout several lessons devoted to planning, drafting, and revising their work.

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