December 3-7

Spelling: Unit 12 this week. Words will be uploaded after school Monday. 

5H Math:  On Monday, students will get their unit 4 tests back.  Their homework for the night will be to review the test with someone at home, particularly problems they missed. Students should look through their work and try to solve the problems they missed.  Students need to bring their tests back to me on Tuesday with a parent signature. 

On Monday, we will also complete a "transfer task" which is a multi-step problem that incorporates skills we have learned this year. Students will complete this task independently, but will have the opportunity to discuss their problem solving process with each other. This week we will define vocabulary needed to understand the content in unit 5: fraction, numerator, denominator, "whole", equivalent.  We will practice showing fractions of whole numbers with manipulatives, ordering and comparing fractions, and finding equivalent fractions. 

Reading/Writing: We will spend more time sharing reading response letters this week. We will read a story from our Harcourt anthology: Across the Wide Dark Sea.  The kids will take the comprehension quiz Thursday.  This story is a historical fiction piece about the journey of the Mayflower.  We will be making connections to social studies as well as reading this story as a writer.  Since students are writing their own historical fiction stories, we will be able to look at the methods of the author in this story.

My hope is that students will have their rough drafts done by Wednesday on their historical fiction stories.  We have been learning about uses of commas, and kids will take a quiz Tuesday.  Then we will review the use of quotations to show speech to aid in students' story writing. 

Social Studies: This week we will learn about the Spanish and French exploring North America as well as the French and Indian War.  Kids should get their social studies tests back on Thursday!