September 9-12

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Below are the details for the week!

Reminder

-Wednesday is "Picture Day", students brought home their picture order forms last week, and should return them by Wednesday.

5H Math: We continue Unit 1 this week by learning how to represent numbers in expanded form or notation as well as practicing comparing and ordering decimals and rounding decimals. Students should be able to compare and round decimals while explaining their reasoning based on their place value knowledge. Students will have math homework most nights this week. 

I will also start students on a math web site this week, Front Row (www.frontrowed.com). This web site has pre-tests that determine students' needs within Common Core standards. I also like the site because kids can watch a video about the skill if they are having trouble. Kids will try the site out in class on Tuesday and the web site will at times be assigned for homework as well as done in class. 

Language Arts: Last week kids defined and we discussed a number of words related to culture (race, ancestors, ethnicity, etc.). We also talked about what we know about our own cultures. Tomorrow kids will be coming up with questions they have about their cultural backgrounds. If possible, kids will need your help answering questions about your family's cultural background either Tuesday or Wednesday night, so they can come to school Thursday with a bit more knowledge about their background. Students will be putting together a digital collage of images and words that represent their culture. Kids can choose one or more of the cultures that make up their background. The purpose is to think about how each person's culture affects who they are. This will also be a discussion when we analyze fictional and historical people in the texts we read. 

I understand each family has varying levels of knowledge about their ancestor's culture as well as different levels of participation with these facets of your culture; please let this be a time to discuss traditions of your culture whether they are practiced by your family or not. Additionally, American culture and traditions could be discussed, particularly if your family does not feel a strong tie to another culture. 

I am trying out a new (to me) web site for the digital collages. Students will be able to put information they've learned about their culture into the collage in the form of words and images. Students will start working on this in school on Thursday. 

As some of you may know, fifth grade readers have been challenged to a "40 book" challenge the last few years. This will be continued in 5H this year. Students will learn about this, this week! There are several reasons for the challenge, a few of them being...to never stop reading all year long, to begin or nourish a love of reading in all students, to grow students fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and writing abilities and to expose students to a variety of genres. We will be studying different literary and nonfiction genres this week. 

More info to come about this at Curriculum Night. 

Word Study: We continue our lesson on words with closed syllables. We will have our first quiz this Friday (9/12). Students will need to correctly spell words as well as be able to separate the words into syllables and "mark" any closed syllables with "cl".  For those new to our word study program, the students will not receive words to memorize, but we will practice words with the same syllable type in class that will be on their quiz. 

Science: Students will be thinking about the water cycle this week...thinking about the importance of the water cycle, how it really "works", the different states of matter and how clouds are formed. We will then begin to learn about the different forms of clouds and what they can tell us about the weather. 

Community Time: We did not quite get everything in last week as planned, so this week we will start with defining different emotions and discussing how emotions are reactions to events. We will then talk about the difference between comfortable and uncomfortable feelings and later this week begin discussing how to problem solve.