November 26-30

Kids will take the Gates test this Wednesday. For more information, check with your child for a letter that was sent home. 

We will also have an Art Awareness presentation this Friday, our first one of the year-great! 

Spelling: Unit 11 this week! Words will be uploaded after school Monday. 

5H Math:  On Monday our focus will be  division, particularly showing a remainder as a decimal. Tuesday we will review converting within measurement systems. We will have our Unit 4 test on Thursday.  The test will probably take more than one class period, so time will be set aside on Friday to finish the test. 

Students may come to study sessions Wednesday during lunch and/or recess as well as after school Wednesday from 3:35-4:05. 

Reading/Writing: We continue to work on writing concise summaries and will practice throughout the week.  I will model writing thoughtful and thorough reading response letters as well as share some good examples from the kids (with their permission of course :)) to help us all understand what types of things to share in our letters. Our goal is always to share thoughts, strategies, questions, etc. to show an understanding of the text. 

Last week, we looked at how authors' describe characters in their books.  This week we will look closely at historical fiction books, as the kids begin to research the information needed to write their own historical fiction story.  We will talk about facts versus opinions, how much factual information to include in a story, and what types of facts to include.  Tomorrow kids will attempt to decide on a time period or event that they would like to base their story around (some have already done this).  Then we will brainstorm a list of important information to research. There will be many steps in this process, but it will be fun as well as challenging. 

Of course we will continue to have independent reading time every day, I will continue to meet with kids for conferences, and we will continue our read aloud, Found.

Social Studies: On Monday, kids can ask any questions they have about the study guide for the social studies test, and then we will play a study game as a class. The colony test is Tuesday. This week kids will also work with their table groups to determine another important event to add to our ongoing collaborative timeline.  They will write about the event as well as illustrate. We will then begin learning about the American Revolution. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Safe travels to those of you headed out to visit family and friends!  Enjoy the holiday.

Kids, here's a link to some Thanksgiving videos if interested...The First Thanksgiving

November 19-20

Spelling: None for this short week!

5H Math:  Kids will get their division quizzes back on Monday.  This short week we are finishing up learning about divisibility rules and solving division story problems. The week after Thanksgiving break, we will have our unit 4 test. I will update you on the exact date as well as study sessions as soon as I can. We still need to review converting measurements before the test. 

Reading: We will finish up some reading in our social studies text about slavery.  Students will compare and contrast slavery in the north and south.              

Writing: We are finishing up our colony opinion writing pieces this week as well as finishing a Thanksgiving writing project.  We will also look at some excerpts from novels to see how authors introduce and describe their characters.

Social Studies: On Monday, kids will finish comparing and contrasting the geography, economy, and natural resources of the different colonial regions. On Tuesday, we will discuss what kids need to study for the colony test.  The test will be Tuesday, November 27th.  

November 12-16

It was great seeing everyone this past week for conferences! 

Spelling: Unit 10 Spelling Words will be uploaded Monday. Make sure studying occurs throughout the week!  

5H Math:  We continue a focus on division this week.  We will review dividing by a two-digit number (2,308 divided by 12), division with a number with a decimal as the dividend (12.14 divided by 3), determine what to do with the remainder, as well as learning divisibility rules. Lots to do...division quiz Friday.  

Reading: This week we will continue several skills from last week.  We worked on determining what was important versus interesting in our social studies text, and taking notes on important information.  From this "important information" we are working on writing concise summaries that focus on the main idea and give a "big picture".  We will also discuss how to write a summary including quotes from the selection.      

We finished "Because of Mr. Terupt" last week, so we will begin a new read aloud this week. I'm on the search for a great science fiction book...                      

Writing: Last week kids decided whether they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed, or strongly disagreed with this statement: Fifth grade students should get weekly allowance. Kids defined reasons for their opinion and then met with others with similar opinions.  Each group then wrote an opinion piece: stating their opinion, describing their reasons, and restating their opinion. Tomorrow, everyone will share their opinion piece. This week, after reading, discussing, and watching videos about colony life, kids will answer the prompt, "In your opinion was colony life enjoyable?"

Social Studies: Last week we learned a great deal about the 13 original colonies...who founded each colony, why it was founded, the year in which it was founded, etc. We will continue reading and taking notes from our social studies text this week. Everyday life in the colonies and slavery will be reading topics this week. 

Citizenship:  After our discussions about empathy and the need for empathy, we will begin discussions about bullying. Defining bullying and what to do when in a bully situation will be topics discussed. 

November 5-9

I look forward to seeing you all this week for conferences! 

Spelling: Unit 9 Spelling Words will be uploaded Monday. Make sure studying occurs throughout the week!  

5H Math:  This week students will get their unit 3 tests back.  We will begin unit 4 by discussing what division means and the vocabulary we need to know to discuss division. We will practice basic computing as well as solving division story problems. New unit 4 links have been added under the "math" tab. 

Reading: We've been practicing a lot of comprehension strategies, and this week we will also practice an accuracy strategy that will help kids correctly read words: triple checking: does it look right? does it sound right? does it make sense?. We will be reading from our social studies text and determining main ideas in order to summarize the section. We will also discuss how to write a summary including quotes from the selection.                            

Writing: Kids have been reading each others' persuasive writing pieces in order to determine whose is the most persuasive and why. This week we will be doing a variety of weeks with opinion/argument writing. I will model this for the kids and give the opportunities to orally discuss opinion in groups as well as write their own opinion/argument. 

Social Studies: We finished our first social studies unit "exploration", and as a fifth grade team we've decided to begin the second quarter with our second social studies unit instead of switching back to science; science will come second this quarter.  This week we are learning about the founding of the 13 colonies as well as everyday life in the colonies.  Throughout the week I will be asking the kids to keep the question "Is living in the English  colonies enjoyable?" in their minds; we will be incorporating opinion/argument writing into our social studies learning. Later in this unit, we will be focused on the Revolutionary War. 

Citizenship:  We began discussions last week about empathy and will continue this week.  The kids had such thoughtful things to say. It was a great conversation about how to treat each other, how to determine others' feelings and how to problem solve in different situations.