WEEK OF JANUARY 24TH

UPCOMING DATES:

- February 1:         AWIM 2- 3:30

- February 4:         Tacky Day

- February 8:         AWIM 2 - 3:30

- February 11-14: Mid-Winter Break

- February 15:      AWIM 2 - 3:30

- February 16:      Marshall Music Visits

- February 22:      AWIM 2 - 3:30

- February 23:      5th Grade Release

AWIM: A World in Motion -A program sponsored by JCI

Each Tuesday in February volunteers primarily from, but not limited to, JCI will be joining us to engage students in a simulation of what it would be like to create and test a product. Students will be placed into groups and each member will have a specific role just as engineers at JCI do. I will update you each week. This is something the kids will truly enjoy!

TACKY DAY!

Next Friday February 4th is a schoolwide "Tacky Day". Students may dress mismatched, clothing backwards, etc. I just cautioned my class that whatever they wear, they need to be able to function as usual in class-nothing is getting in their way, etc.

MATH:

We completed our geometry test yesterday and began our first unit in fractions today. During our "RTI" time twice weekly students are working on skills that they need to become more sure of. The IXL website is a great place for your child to practice skills. They use this on Thursdays and the 4th and 5th grade sections are where they should look. 

WRITING:

Students are completing their final drafts of their "animal rescue" pieces. I am very proud of how the class as a whole has been adding more detail and varying sentence structure as well as being more independent with editing and revising before getting assistance! 

Today we reread an article about advertising junk food. Students wrote a position paper on whether these ads should or should not be banned.

READING:

We have spent time reading and discussing nonfiction articles, comparing and contrasting, making inferences, finding answers to questions in the text, and vocabulary building. We have reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives and will discuss adverbs next. 
Next week: Each students has had a book approved to read for book reports. Students will be given time to read daily and will have an activity to complete. I will be assisting students with learning how to break down the amount of reading they will need to complete each each day. When books are finished, we will be doing book reports and a "Lit Kit." I will give more information about this and their timeline next week.

SCIENCE:

We have learned Newton's 1st and 2nd law of motion and performing experiments that show these concretely. We review vocabulary and discuss it simpler terms daily as well as try to relate them to our everyday lives to make them easier to understand. Next Thursday we will have a quiz over lessons 5-9. I will review with students and give them time to prepare. 

SPELLING:

The lesson 15 test is Monday. I would encourage students to study the words on the Spelling City website.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!

WEEK OF JANUARY 17th

SPELLING BEE!
THANKS TO ALL OUR SPELLERS FOR A TERRIFIC JOB!
Garret Heyerman was our winner and Jenn Eastmann was our runner-up. They will go on to the regional bee at Bluestar Elementary in February! Congratulations!

CONFERENCES:
Thank you for coming to speak with me about your child. If I did not meet with you, Thursday I sent home your child's SRI reading score in an envelope.

Released Time is Wednesday January 26th.

Math:
We had many concepts to practice last week. Identifying polygons, regular and irregular polygon and various figures such as quadrilaterals, parallelograms and trapezoids were some of these. We also identified various triangles as well as measuring their angles and those of quadrilaterals.
We worked with fractions in math RTI this week-these lessons focus on mastery of 4th grade outcomes.We have been reviewing past concepts and will continue to do so.

Reading:
We continue to stay in the nonfiction genre practicing concepts such as skimming, searching for context clues, comparing and contrasting, vocabulary building, and various comprehension strategies. 
We have been using the Storyworks magazine as well as articles about civil rights and Martin Luther King as we studied about him on Monday. We also read a historical fiction piece about slavery entitled, Now Let Me Fly and practiced determining importance. We have had some good discussions about these moments in our country's history. These are topics that are relevant to social studies curriculum as well.

Writing:
We read the book, A Symphony of Whales which is based on a true story. Thousands of Beluga Whales were trapped when ice began closing in around them near Alaska. A Russian ice breaker came to assist, but the whales had to be led out using music since they were afraid of the ship's loud engines. Students are now writing narratives about rescuing an animal and incorporating the use of music to do so.

Science: 
We discussed Newton's first law of motion and will perform experiments to demonstrate it. We reviewed vocabulary and also measured force in newtons using a spring scale.


Social Studies:
Material is was focused on the southern colonies this week.

WEEK OF JANUARY 10

The Spelling Bee is Tuesday, January 18th at 2:00 in the gym.
5th grade students are being asked to wear black and yellow. Good luck spellers!

Black and White Day is Monday, January 17th to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.

5th grade students should wear black and white. We'll be doing a couple activities to learn about Martin Luther King and that time period.

Important Dates:

January 17:          Black & White Day

January 17 - 18:   Parent / Teacher Conferences

January 18:          Spelling Bee @ 2:00 in cafeteria

January 21:          No School

January 26:          5th Grade Release Time

MATH:

We began chapter 6 Geometry this week. We are creating a vocabulary booklet that lists the term (such as line segment) its definition, a picture, how to write it and how to say it. This is called the Frayer Model. Students have this to study and learn these terms as well as assist them with their work. We have worked on measuring angles, types of angles (acute, obtuse, and right) and finding unknown angles.

WRITING:

Students completed short pieces based off of one of two prompts about a snowman. This assignments was focused on sentence fluency and students were asked to use five different sentences types that we have learned and practiced. We will continue to apply this to other pieces. Our next piece is based off of the book, "A Symphony of Whales". Students will write a piece about saving an animal using music as an avenue.

READING;

This week we took the SRI reading test. These scores will be shared with you at conferences or sent home next week if you are not coming to conferences. We have also been reading non-fiction texts and working on finding information in the text, doing comprehension questions, and discussing the text.

Next week we will continue to work with non-fiction texts and focus on making inferences.

SCIENCE

We completed our lessons on balanced and unbalanced forces. We will continue to review all past concepts as we move forward. Since our return to school from break, we have had a practice quiz and much review as well as a quiz Thursday over Lessons 1-4.

SPELLING:

Our focus is homophones, but we have been doing other grammar review. Students used the Spelling City website to practice words for the test Monday.

 PLEASE REMEMBER to send a snack for your child. It is a very long time between breakfast and our lunch!

 

SPELLING BEE

The Spelling Bee is Tuesday January, 18th at 2:00 in the cafeteria.
Sorry I neglected to put the time in earlier posts!

Week of January 3rd

I hope your family is settling back into the regular routine after break! Here's what happened as we settled into ours at school.

Math:
 We wrapped up chapter 5 by reviewing graphing and learning about mean, mode, median, and range. The class is doing well and understand these concepts, but it is easy to get them mixed up. For that reason, I am moving the test to Monday so we can be sure that everyone has a little extra time. Our next unit is geometry and we will begin Tuesday. 
  We also took the Delta math screener today to determine which students need to continue working on mastering 4th grade math concepts such as subtraction with regrouping, multiplication, division and some fraction and decimal concepts. Students who have not met these targets will continue to receive additional support.

Writing:  
  These week we discussed and practiced using a variety of sentence types in our writing. We want to try out new sentence structures and not only use subject/predicate sentences. We wrote a couple short practice pieces with a group and on our own.

Spelling: 
This weeks skill is contractions and proofreading. Remember that students can go to Spelling City to practice the words for our lesson 12 word test on Monday. Look for directions for this in a past blog.

Reading:
We completed our genre unit novel, Sign of the Beaver. I will send home the remainder of their work for this unit next week. Next week we'll be working with nonfiction and include a variety of skills.
Please see the comments concerning reading homework in the homework section below.

Science:
This week we have been reviewing vocabulary and past concepts. We also began Lesson 5 which focuses on balanced and unbalanced forces. We did some role playing for this and had an arm wrestling session - this was a fun (and loud) activity which was actually suggested in the unit! - and the kids had great fun with it!

Homework
Math and Reading Homework is due Monday
  
* Additionally, reading 20 minutes is homework a minimum of 4 days each week.
Students are to complete at least one-two novels (depending on length)  that I OK each month. They may read this at home and at school. When the book is complete, they will be given a short activity to tell about their book.  
Reading frequently builds confidence in their skills, increases their speed and fluency, and builds vocabulary which is important to comprehension. The amount of reading in all subject areas that your child will be expected to do will only increase as they move through school.
 
Conferences
If you are coming to conferences, your child is welcome to come along if you'd like. If I requested a conferences for your child, please remember to return the pink form.

Dates/Upcoming Events:

- January 10:         Chapter 5 math test

- January 17 - 18:  Parent / Teacher Conferences

- January 18:         Spelling Bee

- January 21:         No School

- January 26:         5th Grade Release Time