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Sunday, October 27, 2013

October 28-November 1

Students will be getting several assignments back this week; I will let you know when to look out for them- I may send them before Friday!  Just a note, as I'm grading and reading through kids' work, I notice a lot of students who do not use correct capital letters and punctuation (no matter how many times I remind them!). It's an expectation that kids write in complete sentences, begin with a capital letter, and end with punctuation; a good number do this on writing assignments but may not carry this over to other subject areas. So, tomorrow kids will be given back several assignments and told to edit for punctuation and capital letters; I'll have them do this in a different color so you can see this. Just wanted you all to know! :)

Reminders:
The Fall Festival/Halloween Parade will take place this Thursday, October 31st.  The parade begins at 2:00 and will be outdoors, weather permitting.  In the case of inclement weather, the parade will be canceled.  The parties will begin at 2:30 and end at 3:15.  Students can wear their costumes to school (no masks and no weapons) as long as they are able to take part in school activities and not be too distracting. Students are able to change before the parade starts as well.

First quarter report cards will be available on HAC this Friday, November 1st at 4:00, for parents to view.  Students will be bringing home an envelope with other relevant documents this day as well.

Picture retakes will take place on Tuesday, November 5th.  All students who are new to Watts that started after the original picture day will have their photo taken.  If you would like your child to have their photo retaken, please call the office to let them know.

This week:

5H Math: Students will finish up their division quizzes on Monday. We've also been working on an activity involving Scholastic Book Magazines.  Kids are answering questions using their magazines by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimal numbers. This week we will also review rounding decimals, with a focus on the explanation. We will use number lines to help explain why a number is rounded up or down. We have touched on all of the standards for this unit, and we will spend this week "going deeper", trying to understand other methods of solving problems and better explaining our thinking. The unit 3 test will probably be the week of November 4th; just giving you a heads up, but I will update you and the kids as I see how we're doing this week.

Language Arts:

Last week while reading, we were working on making inferences based on what's written in the text. This will continue to be a focus this week: making inferences AND explaining what in the text made you come to that conclusion. We'll practice this skill through our read aloud, through poems, as well as independent reading books. I'll continue to reinforce the skills we've been working on: determining the main idea as well as supporting details, and giving a concise summary of a piece of writing.

Students have started their rough drafts of their memoirs, and I am writing right alongside them. We have been reading a memoir, to help us understand how a memoir is written. Students decided a memoir should be about something important/memorable from your life but should also be interesting (otherwise no one would want to read it!). From there, students brainstormed a list of possible things they could write about from their lives. We also learned that a memoir is based in truth, but sometimes you have to add minor details to make it interesting. For example, you may not remember exactly what your friend said to you on that important day, but you can figure out something that would make sense. We are working through the steps of the writing process together; and I will begin conferencing with students once they have a bit more of their rough drafts done.

Word Study: This Wednesday we will have a quiz on Open Syllables. As a reminder, open syllables are syllables that end in a vowel where the vowel makes the long vowel sound: e.g. pretend (pre is an open syllable, because it ends in "e" and the "e" says the long vowel sound). More information to come about our next syllable type!

Grammar: I gave the kids a pretest about the parts of speech, and most of the kids are not able to identify the parts of speech in a sentence. We started studying the parts of speech last week, by talking about and identifying nouns. We have talked about some of the different types of nouns (proper, concrete, abstract) and we will continue with nouns this week. During this time, we will also work on correctly making singular nouns plural.

Social Studies:
We're starting our second social studies unit of the year: Colonization. One of the first essential questions is "Why did early settlers come to America?". I'm going to have students take a pre-test to get an idea of where they are with the content for this unit, and then we'll go from there. We'll start with the interesting history of the city of Roanoke to get the kids interested in this period of history.

Citizenship:
We are continuing to talk about problem solving (with each other) as well as being a problem solver for yourself. When problem solving conflicts with others, we've learned that we may sometimes have to "cool off" before talking to the other person, when you're ready to talk with the other person you should start with an "I statement" instead of a "You statement" (e.g. "I'd like to do this part in the project", not "YOU are being bossy!"). This week we'll talk a bit about how to respond to each other when someone expresses a problem with you; which can be difficult!

I am also encouraging kids to problem solve their individual minor problems... instead of sitting without a pencil, ask a friend, go look in the lost in found, raise your hand, etc.

Monday, October 21, 2013

October 21-25

Please make sure to return your conference slip as soon as possible. Thank you!

5H Math: This week students will get their unit 2 tests back. We've been working really hard on division. We've talked about what division means (breaking something into equal groups or pieces), practiced the algorithm for long division, as well as written and solved division story problems. Today we thought about the pattern we notice when solving word problems where the divisor is larger than the dividend (3 divided by 4= 3/4). This helps us to meet the standard 5.NF.3: Solve word problems involving division of whole numbers leading to answers in the form of fractions or mixed numbers.

For the rest of this week, we will work on deconstructing word problems. So often, students have trouble with understanding multi-step word problems: knowing what the question(s) is asking, knowing where to start, and determining if their answer(s) makes sense...and isn't that the most important part? We spend some time understanding how to compute using different operations, but students having the ability to read problems, make a plan, and evaluate their answers is so important. Students will also need to think about what the remainder represents in each problem and the best way to show it (fraction, whole number, leave it off, round up or down).

If we have time we will get into division with a decimal number as the dividend and a whole number as the divisor (e.g. 24.76 divided by 3).

We'll have a division quiz (whole numbers not decimals) this Thursday. Kids will need to be able to solve division word problems using the standard algorithm.

Language Arts:

We started analyzing a poem today, Students are working on understanding the figurative language in the poem and will be applying the message from the poem to their own novels. We are constantly looking for connections between pieces of writing.

I have started to read aloud a memoir to the class. We are using this text as a model for how to write a memoir. Students will begin to brainstorm and write rough drafts for their own memoirs this week. Memoirs are a snapshot of someone's life, about a specific event or time in their lives.

Word Study: We took our homophone quiz today, and we will continue working with open syllables. We will practice marking a few more words with open syllables (single and multisyllabic), then we will learn about the different vowel sounds y can make (long i and long e). When a y is at the end of the first syllable in a word, it usually makes the long i sound (e.g. sky); when a y is not the first vowel (not at the end of the first syllable) it usually says the long e sound (e.g. baby).

Science

We are finishing up our science unit this week. We will do a few experiments to illustrate some of the concepts we've been learning about. Tomorrow we'll think about how water vapor in the air affects air pressure and what type of weather typically comes with high and low pressure.

We will take our weather test this Friday. Students should use their notes to prepare for the test. They should use the essential questions below in order to study.

Essential Questions

  • What are the three main types of clouds and what weather do they indicate?
  • What are the layers of the atmosphere and what happens in each layer? (which layer does weather occur in?)
  • How do molecules react in different temperatures? 
    • What are the three states of matter?
    • Understand the water cycle.
  • What tools/technology do people use to measure/predict the weather?  
Students should also be able to recall information relating to classroom experiments. 





Monday, October 14, 2013

October 15-18

The students have a half day this Wednesday and will be dismissed at 12:15. 

5H Math

Most students need to finish the Unit 2 test tomorrow. Students are also working on correcting their work on the “Restaurant Math” sheets (adding, subtracting, and multiplying decimals).

We’ll begin unit 3 on Wednesday with division. We’ll talk about what division is, in what situations we use division, and solve some realistic problems involving division. We will also practice the standard algorithm for long division.  

Language Arts

This week we will continue to work on finding the main idea of both fiction and nonfiction pieces. We will also determine the supporting details in order to write a summary. We will use Time for Kids articles, our independent reading books, as well as some reading related to our science content. We will also begin writing memoirs.

We will begin lesson three in word study, “Open Syllables”. This has gotten pushed back from last week. Kids will also take a quiz on the homophones we’ve learned about so far on Friday. This will be different than the other quizzes we’ve had, because the kids have these words already in their word study notebooks. For the quiz, I will use the word in a sentence, and kids will have to understand the meaning of the word to know which spelling of the word to write down.

Science


In small groups, kids researched a cloud type, made a model of their cloud, and presented to the class last week. We did not get into the layers of the atmosphere last week, so we will start there this week, and if we have time, move into the tools people use to predict and measure the weather. 

Sunday, October 6, 2013

October 7-11

If you have not done so already, please send Mrs. Wilson (our 5H room parent) an email, so she can add you to her email distribution list. You can email her at:  Wilson-5@comcast.net.  Thanks!

Interim Assessments will be taken this week on Thursday and Friday. These tests are only to inform our instruction and require no student preparation. 

Math: The kids had a lot of fun working with the restaurant menus last week and we will finish up working with them early this week. We added prices and had to subtract to determine how much change we would get from the server. Next, we'll have to determine tax and tip by multiplying decimals! 

We will work with multiplying decimals by whole numbers and decimals by decimals, while relating these problems to real life situations. We will also review rounding decimals this week. The plan is to test unit 2 on Friday. Optional study sessions will be held Thursday during lunch and/or recess and Friday before school at 8:15. I don't have any free after school times this week!!

Reading/Writing: This week we will focus on comparing and contrasting characters by drawing on specific details in the text...evidence!  We will also practice finding the main idea of nonfiction and fiction texts. 

In word study this week, we will finish our study of VCe syllables and take a quiz on this pattern on Wednesday. We will begin Open Syllables on Thursday. Open syllables are syllables that don't have a consonant after the vowel. The vowel makes the long vowel sound in open syllables. An example is the word "broken". The syllable "bro" does not have a consonant after the vowel, and the "o" makes the long vowel sound. 

Science: This week we'll focus on answering the essential questions: "What are the three main types of clouds and how do they indicate weather?" and "What are the layers of the atmosphere and how do they effect weather?". 

Last week we discussed the steps of the scientific method and kids made lists of their own questions about weather. Students had some time to research their questions, and we'll continue to search for answers to our own inquiries as we learn about the essential content of the unit.  


An invitation
To 5th GRADE families
to THRILL MIDDLE  SCHOOL’S
 evening of Thrills, Chills, Mystery, and Magic
Wednesday, October 30, 6:15 – 7:50 p.m.

Wear your costume! (optional)
Thrilling and chilling activities
Dazzling magic from jonathan kamm
Scary stories, games, and more…..
hill middle school

be there!