Good Afternoon! This week we are starting a new theme book for both Language Arts classes. 5th and 6th grade are reading about Lewis and Clark's expeditions across America and 7th and 8th grade are reading about the Rain forest and scientific discoveries made about the animals that live there. Today we learned about the steps to determining how many syllables are in a word. Have your students review those steps to better understand how to attack words that are unfamiliar or otherwise challenging.

1. Count the number of vowels (a, e, i, o, u) in the word
2. Eliminate all of the silent vowels (silent e at the end of a word or the second vowel when two vowels are together)
3. Eliminate the second vowel of a dipthong (two vowels that are together in a word that make one sound eg. boy, you, rough,etc.)
4. The number of vowels sounds left is equal to the number of syllables.

Eg. knap-sack (two syllables) , fore i gn /for-eign (two syllables), com e come (one syllable, congressi o nal con-gres-sio-nal (four syllables).


7th and 8th grades are working with Social studies themed spelling words this week. 5th and 6th grades have words with digraphs that where the first or second letter is silent(Eg. kn, mb, wr, gn). Please make sure that your students are careful to include the "silent" letter when writing or practicing Spelling. /kn/ make the sound of /n/, /mb/ makes the sound of /m/, /gn/ makes the sound of /n/ and /wr/ makes the sound of /r/. The challenge words for both classes are a part of the vocabulary found in this month's reading material.

5th and 6th Grade words:

tomb
gnarl
knack
wrath
knelt
wrench
knead
knitting
foreign
knapsack
wrapper
knuckle
shipwreck
doorknob
wrestled
designed
climber
breadcrumbs
grumbling

Bonus:

keelboat
Sacagawea
Shoshone
planter
reservation

7th and 8th Grade words

caucus
grievances
Arabic
discrimination
navigation
referendum
Louisiana Purchase
enslavement
propaganda
calligraphy
urbanized
magnetic compass
abolitionist
keelboat
Spaniards
circumnavigate
Portuguese
Tasmania
boundaries
secessionist

Bonus:

raucous
emerging
foil (verb)
flourish
intrigued

Please also remember to complete your Vocabulary Note Cards!

5th and 6th

Mississippi
keelboat
Sacagawea
pirogue
Missouri
expedition
Shoshone
planter
corps
reservation

7th and 8th Grade

foliage
lure
reside
muggy
intrigued
tumultuous
scraggly
emerging
flourish
raucous
foil (verb)