November 17-21

Service Club- Wednesday after school until 4:45


This week:

5H Math: 

On Monday we have our division quiz and then we will start learning how to divide a decimal by a whole number. Then we will work on dividing a whole number by a decimal and finally a decimal by a decimal. We will work on using visuals to understand these operations as well as learning how to use computation skills to solve each type of problem. 

Language Arts:

This week, we will finish up our narratives. The kids have in class time on Monday to finish their rough drafts, and may need to finish them for homework if they don't during class. We will spend the rest of the week revising/editing and typing our final drafts. Narratives are due Friday. 

Kids will start to read a novel with a partner this week. I've paired students up and assigned a book for each partnership to read. The purpose is to have fun reading a book that is an appropriate challenge and work on some of the skills we're learning about in the classroom. Kids need to be responsible, though, and keep up with their reading. Each day when they meet with their partner, they will determine how much they need to read for homework. Every time they read, they will need to record something in their "journal" (we're going to staple a few pieces of paper together). Tomorrow I will explain to the kids the options they have (a prediction they have, a question they have, a word they don't understand, something they want to discuss with their partner, etc.). At the end of each chapter, kids will write a summary of the chapter with their partner. 

I'm hoping the kids will begin to internalize some of the reading skills they practice with their partner, and I hope they enjoy their books! This will be ongoing for at least 2 weeks. 

We continue to read Liberation of Gabriel King, and respond to the text in our reading notebooks. The text talks about desegregation of schools, so I hope to provide students with a bit more background information about this, this week. 

Students gathered information about an element of their choice last week. Early this week kids will write an informational piece explaining about their element. The goal is for students to have an introduction, information that is logically organized and includes facts, and a concluding statement. 


Word Study:

This week we learn two more Greek/Latin roots: script/scribe and port. During the week we will determine the meanings of these roots and learn about words that contain each root. On Friday kids will have a quiz on the 3 roots we've learned about (including "press" from last week). Unlike other word study quizzes, this quiz will require kids to understand the meaning of the words we've studied the last couple weeks. Kids will have to fill in a blank in a sentence with the correct word and tell the meaning of the root words. These will all be words we've studied, and kids already have examples in their notebooks, and will be adding more this week. 

Science:

On Monday, we will use clay to make models of the parts of an atom. This will help us practice using the vocabulary related to an atom's structure: proton, neutron, electron, nucleus. On Tuesday, kids will have a vocabulary quiz. They already have the words and definitions and we have been practicing; they are aware they will have a quiz. 

Next, we will move into magnets...the properties and types of magnets. 

November 10-14

It has been wonderful seeing you all for conferences so far. I enjoy and value the time I get to speak with each of you. The last round of conferences is Monday 4:40-8:00- see many of you tomorrow!

Tuesday- No school- Veterans' Day
Wednesday- Service Club (3:35-4:45) and Math Olympiad

5H Math: 

The kids are doing pretty well with division of whole numbers when dividing by a 1 digit divisor. They had an "exit slip" on Friday. I give the students a few problems, and use these to guide my instruction. I'm going to hand these back to kids tomorrow so they can see how they did and will tell the kids to bring them home and show you, so you can see how your child is progressing. These are not graded. 

Our goals for the week include: solving division word problems as well as understanding what to do with the remainder (round up? write it as a fraction? leave it off the final answer?) and dividing by a double digit divisor. I continue to encourage kids to make an estimate before solving, so they can check their answer for reasonableness. Also, they can use multiplication to check their answer. We will have a division quiz on Friday. This will include computation and word problems, dividing by a single and double digit divisor. 

Remember, there are links in the math tab that are helpful under "Unit 3".

Language Arts:
This week kids will write their rough drafts of their narratives. As a reminder, they are writing historical narratives about Cortes conquering the Aztec people. We've done a lot of research to prepare for this. For their narratives, the focus is to have a clear event sequence including descriptive details. Of course, we will also include facets of our research where able.  

We begin our next anchor text, "The Liberation of Gabriel King". This book is set in Georgia in the 1970s. It is about two kids who are best friends and how they help each other overcome their fears. You can read more about the text here:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Liberation-Gabriel-King-Going/dp/0142407666

I have a plan for students to begin reading a novel with a partner this week. Each partnership will read a novel that is an appropriate challenge for the students (each student will have a copy). The purpose is to practice reading strategies as well as promote discussion of the text. I hope for students to be able to use these same skills when they are reading independently. I am hoping this will get started this week, but I keep finding I plan too much! 

Word Study:
This week we study the Greek and Latin roots: "press" and "script/scribe". We will learn their meanings and study words that contain these roots. Kids will have a quiz on these topics the week of 11/17. 

Social Studies: 
Exploration Assessment Monday. Kids should make sure they bring all of their study materials (social studies book, notebook and reading sheet) back to school. 

Science:
We begin science again this week with our Magnet and Electricity unit. This unit starts by learning about atoms and their structure. There is a lot of vocabulary that goes along with this (atom, nucleus, neutron, proton, electron, electron shell, element, compound). We will be learning about these terms early in the week, so you may want to review these with your child. We will also learn about the Periodic Table and how elements are organized. 

Citizenship:
We continue last week's topics of gossip and inappropriate remarks...what these are and what to do when either one occurs. 

DLT:
I will begin working with many of the students on their multiplication facts this week during DLT. This will be ongoing for a few weeks. 

Study topics for Exploration Quiz

The exploration assessment will be next Monday (11/10).

kids should know:

-several reasons Europeans began exploring during the 1400s and early 1500s
-technological advances that allowed and benefited explorers
-the effects (positive and negative) of European exploration during this time period

Kids will have their notes, social studies textbooks as well as another reading passage to use for studying.

November 3-7

I can't believe it's November already! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend, and kids enjoyed Trick or Treating if they went out! Also, I hope you were able to access student report cards on HAC this weekend. I look forward to seeing you all soon at conferences! 

This week:
Tuesday: no school for students- Parent/Teacher Conferences 8:00-3:00
                 Book Fair begins Tuesday! 
Thursday: Parent/Teacher Conferences 4:30-8:00 (regular school day)

Hopefully, kids are collecting their Boosterthon pledges! Thank you again parents for helping your kids with this. Wednesday is our first "count" day to see how we're doing with collecting pledges. Please encourage your child to get this done sooner than later :). 


5H Math: 

Students will get their NBT2 quizzes back on Monday (multiplying and dividing by powers of 10 including exponents). Then we are finally beginning unit 3 which focuses on division. This week we will review the strategies kids have learned to divide whole numbers before we get into the standard algorithm of division (long division). The purpose of reviewing the other methods is to help students understand what division is and this will help them understand why long division works. We will mostly work this week with single digit divisors. Next week we'll move into double-digit divisors. 

Language Arts/Social Studies:

If your child has not shown you their "Where I'm From" presentation, make them show you! The kids did such a great job presenting their poems this past week; I was very proud! You will be getting the written portions of the performance task home soon, but their presentations are saved on their Google accounts. 

We also finished Becoming Naomi Leon last week, and celebrated by carving soap just like Naomi does- it's harder than it sounds! We are wrapping up the first unit on "Identity" and will be moving into our next unit "Courage" later this week. We will begin this by trying to define what courage is. Courage will be an ongoing theme that will weave throughout the fiction and nonfiction texts we read. 

Kids will spend a couple days this week learning about the Aztec and Cortes in order to help them gather information for their narrative writing pieces. As I said last week, the kids are going to write a narrative (story) from the Aztec perspective similar to a book we read earlier this year called "Encounter". After we gather factual information to include in our stories we will make a plan for the plot of our stories. I hope we will begin rough drafts this week. 

We are also wrapping up our Exploration Social Studies unit this week. Kids will do a short research project on one of the tools that helped explorers in the late 1400s/early 1500s. We are working on taking notes and summarizing these notes in order to write a short paper; many of the kids want to take information right from the source to write their paper, which I'm sure you know leads to just copying information without really understanding it. We will also be learning how to properly cite a source. 

We will have a Social Studies Quiz Monday 11/10. I will post study topics in the next couple days. 

Citizenship: 

This week we'll be discussing friendship groups (what to do when you or someone is being left out) and gossip (what it is and strategies when you're involved in gossip).