May 14-17

Jump Rope for Heart day has been rescheduled for this Wednesday...make sure kids have PE shoes, water bottles, comfortable clothes for jumping rope!

Spelling: For the remainder of the year we will be working with words off the 100 most commonly misspelled words list. The first 20 are posted in the spelling tab.

5H Math:  Students will get their division quizzes back tomorrow; please remember the points earned from these division questions will replace points from division questions on the test. Let me know if you have any questions.

The kids have been working diligently on their math task of planning their Fantasy Fifth Grade Farewell. We will have in class time tomorrow and we will begin presentations Wednesday. Students are presenting through powerpoints and will be scored on a variety of categories including the accuracy of their calculations. They should have math on each slide of their presentation.
It will probably take two days for presentations and we will begin unit 9 on Friday.

Tuesday night homework will be finishing up math presentations and practicing presentations.


Reading/Writing: Ok, we have almost wrapped up the pioneer project. Most students are reading or close to ready to record. They really are sounding and looking wonderful! I think you'll be impressed!

We will begin writing memoirs this week based on a particularly fond memory.

The end of the year is quickly approaching, and a good number of kids have already met the reading goal of 40 books! It would be great to check with your child to see if they need any help finding a book of a particular genre...expanding horizons :).

I forgot the grammar quiz at home last Friday...argh! So we will be taking the quiz tomorrow, Tuesday. It is over the 8 parts of speech.

Science:

At the end of last week, we started talking about the difference between plant and animal cells. This week we will look at an onion skin and a swab from our own cheek under the microscope. Finally we will look at amoeba!
Social Studies:

We spent a little more time than expected on our social studies presentations than I thought last week, so we are just diving into the Civil War this week.

Next, we will move into the Civil War. I'm going to try something new, and we are going to learn about the Civil War through inquiry. So, we will begin by accessing our prior knowledge as well as building more background knowledge. Throughout this process we will be thinking critically and asking questions. Once we have some "big questions", we will break into groups based on interest to research these "big questions".


Kids need to be watching the news or checking the news web sites in the social studies tab to prepare for a current event presentation. We've had a couple great presentations so far!