The Eagle Eye

Parent Newsletter
Volumn 5, Issue 2 - Spring 2008

4th Grade News: Mrs. Harris - Room 304

The second half of the school year brought two new faces to our school. In February, we welcomed a new student, Alyssa, to our class. In March, Miss Barbra Capulong joined us. She is enrolled at DePaul University and will graduate in mid-June with a degree in education.

Math brought some fun activities to our room in the early spring months. We reviewed geometry concepts during a lesson titled "Tasty Geometry". At the end of the lesson each student ate the materials used to create lines, angles, and shapes. Students were split into two groups. Each group worked together to create a three dimensional geometric farm. For example, there were sheep with triangle shaped heads and pigs made entirely out of cylinders.

In honor of Earth Day in April, the students went on line each day for a week at a vocabulary

website. By the end of the week, our class had donated 30,440 grains of rice to feed the hungry all over the world.

Another special activity that took place was Junior Achievement. This 5 week program was presented to the class by a volunteer parent, Mrs. Pfeifer. Each student created and evaluated his/her own business. As the school year comes to an end, this class is ready to say, "Look out 5th grade! Here we come!"

5th Grade News: Mrs. Shutt - Room 305

The highlight of the second half of the year for the fifth grade was the DARE program. During the 12 week program, Officer Mary Lombardo, from the Neighborhood Relations Division of the Chicago Police Department, taught the children problem-solving techniques to help them deal with peer-pressure and the temptation of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

DARE Program: Officer Mary Lombardo
with the Fifth Graders in Room 305

The children used problem-solving techniques in a different way to independently design, conduct, and report on single-variable Science experiments. They continued their design work in Social Studies, where groups of students worked together to design board games that would help other children learn about the early American colonies of Roanoke and Jamestown.

In Math, the fifth-grade students used both their Math skills and Language Arts skills to create a book about fractions. And in Language Arts class, they researched and reported on different forms of poetry, and then used what they learned from the research to write their own poems in forms such as limericks, haiku, and tanka. Several of the students had their poetry chosen to be included in an anthology of children's poetry to be published this summer.

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