Dec 15-19

Hi everyone! If I don't speak with you, I hope everyone has a great break! Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate! Happy New Year to everyone! You should all know I am so thankful to have your children in my class this year! I am so lucky that I get to tell people all the time what a great class I have. Thank you for your support and for letting me spend so much time with your great kids :)! 

• Wednesday: Hill Field Trip in the morning, no need for special lunches, we'll be back for lunch at the school
• Thursday: Fifth Grade Movie "Day"- please make sure your child brings back their permission slip
• Friday: Holiday Parties in the afternoon

5H Math: Kids got their tests back on Monday. We have started Unit 4: Geometry. We have been working on defining geometry terms as well as listing the attributes of shapes (what makes a shape what it is). For example a square has 4 sides with equal length and 4 right angles. We will not have math on Wednesday, because of the field trip. We will focus on vocabulary the rest of the week through different hands on activities and games. Kids will be working on a geometry project, looking for geometric shapes in real objects to put together a geometry book. Kids will collect images in a Google Document to be printed and combined in a book where they define the geometric terms that are present in their images.  Kids will have time in class, but will also need to work on this for homework. 

Here are the standards for this unit, again, if anyone missed them:

•  5.MD.C.3. Recognize volume as an attribute of solid figures and understand concepts of volume measurement.
•  5.MD.C.4. Measure volumes by counting unit cubes, using cubic cm, cubic in, cubic ft, and improvised units.

•  5.G.B.3. Understand that attributes belonging to a category of two-dimensional figures also belong to all subcategories of that category. For example, all rectangles have four right angles and squares are rectangles, so all squares have four right angles.
•  5.G.B.4. Classify two-dimensional figures in a hierarchy based on properties.

Language Arts:

We have been working responding to a text by stating our thoughts, quoting from the text to support our thoughts and finally explaining how our quote supports our thought. We are also working on making sure we try and pick the best possible quote to support our thoughts.  I have a couple papers the kids have done on this topic that I will send home as soon as possible! 

Kids should be finishing up their partner books this week. I know a couple groups will not be done, and that is okay, as long as they keep plugging away! When students are finished they are answering a couple questions about their text (writing a short summary, telling about the character with support from the text, and determining what the theme of their book is). 

I introduced the Quarter 2 Performance Task to kids last week- see last post. Most students have chosen a person they think they would like to research. The important thing is that their chosen person must have shown courage in some way. We will get into this project deeper after break. Right now we are working on our opinion writing to help get prepared for the performance task. This week we will be watching a few helpful videos for how to write an opinion piece as well as practicing this by writing an opinion about GMOs (Genetically Modified foods); a topic from our Time for Kids magazine. 

Social Studies:

We have switched back to social studies. This unit is about colonization of America. We will learn about the different countries that set up colonies in North America. Kids will learn what it was like for these colonists, why they came and the challenges they had. We started this week by thinking back to what we learned in the first unit about exploration. Now we will move on to learning about Spain's colony...New Spain. 

Citizenship:

For citizenship this week, students are learning about digital citizenship, appropriate online behavior. 

December 8-12

Not many reminders for this week:
-Chorus Concert Tuesday at 7:00
-Service Club (for those students involved) Wednesday until 4:45

Also, the Service Club will be starting a food drive later this week, more information to come!

5H Math:
Many students still need to complete the Unit 3 math assessment, so kids will do this Monday as well as take a pre-test for Unit 4-Geometry. We will probably not have math Tuesday, because we have an assembly during this time. Then we will spend a couple days working on a math transfer task (multi-step problem that combines multiple skills from unit 3). By Friday, we should be actually starting the unit 4 skills; we will start with geometry vocabulary- there is quite a lot! 

Standards for unit 4:

•  5.MD.C.3. Recognize volume as an attribute of solid figures and understand concepts of volume measurement.
•  5.MD.C.4. Measure volumes by counting unit cubes, using cubic cm, cubic in, cubic ft, and improvised units.

•  5.G.B.3. Understand that attributes belonging to a category of two-dimensional figures also belong to all subcategories of that category. For example, all rectangles have four right angles and squares are rectangles, so all squares have four right angles.
•  5.G.B.4. Classify two-dimensional figures in a hierarchy based on properties.

Language Arts:
-Last week we worked on quoting from the text to support our answers as well as explaining how our quote supports our answer. This week, we will look at a couple successful student samples and students will revise their written work if necessary. Of course, we continue to read The Liberation of Gabriel King, discuss and respond to questions in writing. 

We are starting some grammar work this week. Kids will be editing sentences (Daily Oral Language= DOL) and we will discuss the skills needed to edit each sentence- the goal is to do this 2-3 times a week. This will be ongoing. 

Please continue to encourage your child to read their partner novel at home; we are trying to finish before winter break begins! 

This week we will start talking about the quarter 2 performance task. This task will involve students researching a person of their choice that they believe has shown courage. I will show kids the components of the task and we will brainstorm a list of possible people, start reading about a variety of people and kids will possibly pick a person they want to research by the end of the week. 

While in the computer lab this week, we will look at the PARCC practice test for English Language Arts. I want to show students the format of the test on the computer, the different features they will be able to use as well as the layout and types of questions. We will look at the practice tests more than once, focusing on different goals each time. I do not want to overwhelm the kids, and I want them to be prepared for when they do take the PARCC, so we will just look at it a little at a time. I encourage you to take a look at the practice test (http://parcc.pearson.com/practice-tests/english/), but please do not have your child spend a lot of time looking at or attempting to take the practice test at home- especially not before we look at it at school. 

Science:
Well, we really will finish the Magnet and Electricity unit this week. Students will have science reading homework a couple nights this week. This week students will learn what a simple circuit is, as well as make one. Students will also learn the difference between series and parallel circuits, and again get to make each type of circuit. Our science test will be Friday. We will go through our notes and class papers and mark areas to study. 

Topics to study: 

• The basic parts of an atom and how they relate to magnetism and electricity
• Properties of magnets
• Circuit electricity: parallel and series circuits (what is a circuit? what are the parts of a circuit? what is the difference between these two types?)   
• The 2 types of electricity (static and current) and their similarities and differences

For citizenship for the next couple weeks, students will be participating in digital citizenship lessons to think about respectful, responsible and safe behavior online/with any technology. 

December 1-5

Happy December, everyone! 

Tomorrow, Tuesday 12/2, kids will take the GATES test. A letter about this assessment came home last week. One session is in the morning and one in the afternoon- each test is about 30 minutes long.

Kids are bringing home information about the Holiday Shop tonight. Our class shopping day is tomorrow- Tuesday. If kids forget/can't bring money/are absent tomorrow, they can shop on Wednesday. 

Kids are bringing home their CogAT scores tonight and most will have at least 1 graded paper (we've had a lot of absences, so some kids may not have something). 

A permission slip was sent home a while ago for a field trip to Hill, please send this back with your child as soon as possible. 

With these 3 weeks of school left before winter break, we will be working hard! Please encourage your child to continue to put their best effort into all they do, every day!

5H Math: Today, most kids got their unit 3 computation quizzes back. We will have the Unit 3 Test on Friday. Since we just took the computation quiz, the test will be mostly word problems. The skills are: 

• add, subtract, multiply and divide decimals 
• most of the division problems will be decimal divided by whole number, one problem will be a decimal divided by a decimal
• divide whole numbers 
• round decimals to any place
• solve problems that involve dividing whole numbers and the answers are in fraction form...for example: 3 pizzas divided by 4 people means each person gets 3/4 a pizza.   

We will work on the last skill from above on Wednesday this week, using the kids' Student Math Journals. To study for the test, kids can use:

• their WINK sheet (What I Need to Know)
• sheets (or quizzes) from the unit that we've written "Unit 3" at the top of, or any pages from SMJ we've done
• notes we've written in our math notebook
• the math tab on the blog...look under "Unit 3"

Language Arts:

Kids continue to read their novels with their partners. Important: Kids need to finish their novel by Winter Break...that means they have 14 more school days. Kids have time every day to read with their partner during school, and they should be reading at home as well. Kids books are of various sizes, so yes, some kids will have more pages to read. Please, check with your child to see that they are keeping up with their books. It's important they are responsible and read the pages they decide upon with their partner. 

Today we started reading a story from our Harcourt books, "Island of the Blue Dolphins," which is actually an excerpt from the novel with the same title. We worked on understanding vocabulary based on context clues and tomorrow we will work on summarizing the most important events of the story. 

We continue to read The Liberation of Gabriel King and work on a variety of standards. This week we will work on: determining the meaning of words based on context clues, understanding the purpose of a paragraph in the structure of the writing (e.g. the purpose of one paragraph could be to describe a character or a setting, while another could be to show the difference between two characters, etc.), and answering questions about the text by providing evidence from the text (text-dependent questions). These skills are ongoing throughout the year! 

Word Study

Today and tomorrow we are finishing up learning about the Greek/Latin root "port". Kids will take a quiz on this root word on Friday. 

I also hope to start a bit more grammar work this week. We'll be learning about different grammar skills, by going back to an old method...anyone remember DOL (Daily Oral Language)? While we may not do this every day, my goal is to work on correcting sentences 2-3 times a week, in the morning as kids come in. These sentences are connected to the Common Core Language Standards and will guide our conversations about accurate grammar. 

Science

This week we need to finish up our magnetism and electricity unit. Today kids learned about magnetic fields, and tomorrow we will learn a bit more about how they are formed. The rest of the week we will work with electricity. Kids will learn what is necessary to make a circuit and what the different types of circuits are (series, parallel). Kids will be able to make these circuits in class as well as an electromagnet- this will show kids how electricity can be used to make a magnet. We will test this unit next week (week of 12/8).