This week we begin work on our Endangered Species project.  The students have been asked to find sources for research on their animal and to purchase a poster board.  They chose their animal on Friday and will need to have their resources and poster board in class on or before March 15th.   

In English, we are working with adverbs and prepositions.   Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives and/or other adverbs.  The fifth graders took notes all adverbs in class and will be practicing their use in both their English and Reading workbooks over the next couple of weeks. 

We continue to include dialogue in our stories and here is a link for Words to Use Instead of Said. 

 Often the presence of a prepositional phrase in a sentence confuses fifth graders and distracts them from the main sentence structure.  We work hard to identify prepositional phrases and cross them out before identifying the subject, verb, direct object, and indirect objects in our sentences. Below is a list of common prepositions for your use:

about	around	beside	for	near	outside	under
above	at	by	from	of	over	until
across	before	down	in	off	past	up
after	behind	during	inside	on	through	with
along	below	except	into	out	to	without

The noun or the pronoun that follows a preposition is the object of the preposition and part of the prepositional phrase. 

Please note the following examples:

with the blue cover                to me
from the ancient past             by people
for a special purpose              about them


Verbs

Rules for Forming the Present Tense

1. Most verbs: Add -s.	get--gets         play--plays
2. Verbs ending in s,ch,sh,x,and z:      Add -es.	pass--passes    punch--punches push--pushes    mix--mixes fizz--fizzes
3. Verbs ending with a consonant and y:      Change the y to i and add - es.	try--tries         empty--empties

Rules for Forming the Past Tense

1. Most verbs:  Add -ed.	play--played suggest--suggested
2. Verbs ending with e:      Drop the final e and add - ed.	believe--believed hope--hoped
3. Verbs ending with a consonant and y:      Change the y to i and add - ed.	study-studied hurry--hurried
4. One-syllable verbs ending with a single vowel and a         consonant:      Double the final consonant ad add - ed.	stop--stopped plan--planned

Rules for Forming the Future Tense

1. To form the future tense of a verb, us the helping verb will or shall with the main verb.  Shall is often used with I or we.