December 10-14

Spelling: Unit 13 this week. Words are uploaded in spelling tab. The base list words are many of the commonly misspelled words that kids should work hard to use correctly in their writing!

5H Math:  Thank you for going over the unit 4 math test with your child and sending them back to school. I am recording what types of problems students need more practice with, and will send them home again once I'm finished.

 

This week we are spending a lot of time adding and subtracting fractions.  Students did very well today adding and subtracting when the denominators were the same.  When we had to find a common denominator, kids were having a harder time. We will continue working on this, as well as adding and subtracting mixed numbers and changing improper fractions to proper fractions.

Reading/Writing: Well, as usual it has taken longer than expected to finish writing our stories.  Kids have known since last week that rough drafts are due Tuesday AM, so hopefully this will not result in a late night for any students. We worked on creating a rubric and I shared the final rubric with the kids today.  They will have this as well as revising and editing checklists to use when perfecting their stories. After revising and editing, we will be typing the final drafts of our stories. 

 

This week we are also working on answering open-ended questions in an organized written response.  Students will also have the opportunity to write their own open ended questions for others to answer. We are working on planning our writing (pre-writing) before responding in sentences using a graphic organizer.

 

We will be looking for common themes in reading this week. Using our read aloud, independent reading books, Time for Kids magazines, and other sources we will think about these common themes (good vs. evil, love and friendship, man vs. nature) and the similarities between these various texts.

 

Grammar:  This week we are studying some common Latin word parts (pre-, in-, sub-, etc.). We are starting a a study of the 8 parts of speech and are beginning by reviewing the types of nouns: common, proper, singular, plural, abstract, concrete, collective, and possessive. Did you know there were that many types of nouns?? This is a review, and we will move into pronouns next. 

 

 

Science: This week we will begin to learn about elements, atoms, and subatomic particles. The class is going to be working with an online interactive periodic table of elements to do a short research project on four different atoms.