Dear Parents,

 

We are officially halfway through with our reading of Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes, having completed the first seven chapters.  We are also working on three different original songs that we will record using our 24-track digital recorder.  Additionally, we were privileged to talk with author Heather Shumaker on Wednesday.

 

We will continue reading of Angela’s Ashes as well as working on our songs and bolstering our grammar skills by learning to quickly recognize the following parts of speech:

 

• Noun
• Verb
• Adjectives
• Adverb
• Conjunction (and, or, but)
• Pronoun
• Articles (a, an, the)
• Pronoun (he, she, them, it etc.)
• Prepositions (besides, of between, from, to, until, up, after etc.)

 

In Math this week we worked with triangles and angles, learning to identify the following varieties:

• Right
• Scalene
• Obtuse
• Acute
• Straight
• Isosceles
• Equilateral

 

We conducted three different, hands-on Science experiments, describing our projects, developing hypothesizes, experimenting and writing up our results.

 

Andreas, Sebastian and Robbie explored how volcanoes erupt.

 

Alexis, Antonella and Leah learned how to grow crystals

 

Emma, Maria and Plout discovered how to make slime.

 

In Social Studies we continued with our unit on Chicago History in anticipation of our Friday October 18, 2019 Field Trip to Graceland Cemetery.  This week we covered the lives of middleweight champion Robert Fitzsimmons, heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and the owner of the Chicago Daily News Victor Lawson.

Additionally, we discussed the allegations of corruption against President Donald Trump and we outlined how the impeachment process works.  A few items to remember:

 

• The impeachment process begins in the House of Representatives which is the governing body charged with determining whether or not the president has committed an impeachable offense
• The case is then sent to the Senate for a trial
• In order to remove the president from office, the Senate must achieve a 2/3 majority (67 votes).
• Two presidents have had articles of impeachment brought against them – Andrew Johnson in 1867 and Bill Clinton in 1998
• Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 before being impeached
• No U.S. president has been removed from office via impeachment
• Like anyone else in the United States, the president is innocent until proven guilty

 

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  Have a restful weekend.

 

Dr.Michael