May 5-9

We will have our last round of CBMs for the year, this week. 

Reminders for the kids for Monday:

Hill trip: a few kids have not brought their permission slip back (told these kids this on Friday and emailed you if I didn't have the slip)

Jump Rope for Heart: wear comfortable clothes, bring water
Marble Party: I'm making brownies for the kids, they need to ask you to sign their permission slip. The kids voted to play a game outside. If they have an outdoor game they like to play that they can carry to school, they can bring it. If it rains, I told the kids to bring a backup board game, card game or electronic.  

This week:

5H Math: There will be no math Monday because of our field trip to Hill. On Tuesday kids will get their unit 8 (part II) tests back. We will finish up learning about volume on Tuesday as well. Kids have done a great job figuring out volume by counting cubes and by using the formula (L x W x H= V), but many had difficulty determining volume of "composed figures", meaning when 2 rectangular prisms are put together. We will work on this again on Tuesday. Then we will learn about coordinate planes, the x and y axis and how to plot points as well as determine coordinates of points. Finally we will review converting metric measurements. We will take the unit 9 test the week of May 12th. 

Language Arts/Social Studies:

This week kids are finishing up the writing piece they started last week about events in US history that have moved us forward as a country. Their writing pieces will be due Friday morning; kids may need to work on them for homework throughout the week. Our goal is to finish rough drafts by Tuesday, so if kids aren't done with them, they will need to finish their draft for homework. We will have time for typing on Wednesday, but kids may need to type some at home on Wednesday and Thursday. 

We have been building our background knowledge about the Civil War through watching a documentary, read alouds and reading the social studies text. The kids will be taking part in an inquiry of the Civil War, as we did earlier this year with a study of slavery when we learned about triangular trade routes. For most of the week, we will continue to learn about the causes of the war, main events during the war and the aftermath. Throughout this time students will be recording their new learning and questions. On Friday, we will compile our questions in order for students to determine an area they would like to further learn about. Students will be choosing a "big question" to inquire about (for example: What resources helped the Union win the war? Non-example: What year were slaves freed?). 

For the next few days, I will be asking students to take on a perspective of a person or type of person living during this time period, to help them connect to and internalize the different perspectives of this period. 

Word Study: For the rest of the year, we will be learning about Greek and Latin roots. We will learn about 1 or 2 a week; what it means, and examples of words with the root. There will be no quiz this week. We are starting with the root "press".