Noemi and Alyssa's Weekly Update...

Hello, this is Alyssa and Noemi from Mrs. Clayton’s amazing class. We have been having a sometimes challenging, but great time this week, and we would like to tell you all about it. Some of the highlights were our MAP testing, the PACER test in P.E., and the final Grammar Challenge. We hope you enjoy reading all about our extraordinary week as much as we did writing about it! Does this sentence contain alliteration or onomatopoeia: “Crash! Splat! The plate toppled out of her hands and onto the floor.” How about this one: What are three properties of an obtuse triangle? Give up? If you have no idea what to say, or are feeling completely confused, you’ll know exactly how several of our classmates felt on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings. The time had come for our MAP tests. We were all working hard to get good scores on the tests this week, and it wasn’t very easy. Monday was Math, or Puzzles as we like to call it, on Tuesday we took the Reading test, and Thursday was for the Language test. Each test had about 52 questions, except for the reading one which was about 42 or so. Although taking the test was stressful at times, we all felt better after seeing our great scores. Everyone was super happy when we finally finished our MAP tests. Great work all of you! On Thursday, we took the PACER test. A PACER test is a physical endurance challenge in which you have to run as many laps as you can. There is a recording that tells you when to start and stop. There is also a time limit to finish each lap, (which gets faster every few laps) so if you finish after the recording tells you that the lap time is over, you have a miss. If you get two misses in a row you have to stop running. The reason we are doing PACER tests is that the P.E. teachers want to know how much we have improved over the school year, as we took the same test at the beginning of fifth grade. The whole class had mixed feelings about the PACER test, and here is what some of our classmates have to say: “I was nervous before the test”, “I was really scared of getting a bad score,” and “ I was super excited and nervous, but I knew I was going to do just fine.” We definitely agreed that just like every test, this one was scary at first, but in the end, it didn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would. Our whole class was super excited (and nervous) about the Grammar Challenge on Friday, because it was the very last round. In case you’re wondering, the Grammar Challenge is a competition between the boys and the girls, in which we correct grammar mistakes and compete for points. This round would determine whether the girls or the boys would win after four long weeks of competition. The speakers representing each team for this week were Anushka, who was representing the girls’ team, and Greg who represented the boys’ team. They both did a great job and got a lot of points for their teams. There was some tough competition, but the girls’ team won this round. It came pretty close, though. We had some really hard questions, like having to complete the analogy “Square is to plane as cube is to...?”. A lot of us were super confused. Some people thought it might be a 3D shape, a train or even the universe. Congratulations to the girls’ team, and better luck next time, boys! So our week has now come to an end, and so has this Weekly Update. We hope you have enjoyed hearing all about our MAP testing, the PACER test, and one of the non-testing events, such as the Grammar Challenge. What a super special week! Even though this has been a great one, we are sure next week will be just as fun. Hear more about it from the brilliant Beatrice and the awesome Anushka next Thursday!