WEEK OF DECEMBER 3rd- DECEMBER 6TH

WELCOME BACK! I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday.

Upcoming Dates:
FRIDAY, JAN. 13 ........PTO BINGO NIGHT 7:00-8:30 in the MS East Gym
FRIDAY JAN. 13..........RELEASE TIME
TUESDAY JAN 17.......5th GRADE SPELLING BEE in Hamilton El cafeteria
FRIDAY, JAN. 20 ....... PTO POPCORN
MONDAY, JAN. 23..... PTO MEETING – 7PM
FRIDAY, JAN. 27 ........NO SCHOOL

MATH:
We have been reviewing concepts in our fractions unit, particularly simplifying fractions, changing fractions to decimals and vice versa, and placing them on number lines. We will take the unit test over fractions once we are into unit 8 "Fraction Operations". We find students perform better after working in the next unit as they practice many of the same skills within the new concepts. Students have also done some work reviewing rounding, long division, and multiplication.
 
READING:
We worked with nonfiction texts this week. We read "Deadly Hits" from the Storyworks magazine and worked on author's purpose, differentiating between our opinions and what the author is saying, comprehension skills, and vocabulary. Students took the SRI test on Friday.


WRITING:
Our focus this week has been sentence fluency. Students received a page with examples of various sentence types. We discussed and gave numerous examples. Their assignment is to choose 1 of 2 prompts and write a short story including at least 5 of the 10 sentence types we have practiced. 


SPELLING:
Our skill this week has been homophones.


SCIENCE:
We are discussing the difference between mass and weight and applying it to Newton's second law of motion: An object's acceleration (speed or direction) depends on the mass and size of the force acting on it." We discuss repeatedly what this means in kid-friendly language. Experiments have centered on comparing the speed and distance of 3 balls of different masses and weights.