Final Learnings

It's hard to believe that we are six weeks away from the end of this school year.  What a joy it has been for me to work with such great students and families this year!

May is a very busy time of year for everyone, and especially in fifth grade.  I'll be sending a lot of emails out with updates on end of year events, so please read those emails with the necessary registrations or document dates.  A few dates to keep in mind:

• April 20th - No School
• April 25th - Tour of Cimarron Middle School - a permission slip was sent home last week
• April 27th - Talent Show
• May 10th - "Growing and Changing" talk - I will send video links next week
• May 22nd - Outdoor Ed trip - registration and information coming soon!
• May 23rd - Field Day (this is a date change from my previous blog)
• May 25th - Last Day of School - picnic at Tallman Park/Fifth Grade Slideshow at school

I sent home a permission slip for our tour of Cimarron Middle School last week.  Please return this ASAP.  No payment is needed.  Our puberty talk is scheduled for May 10th so I will be emailing you in about a week with the links to the videos we will be showing students. 

The following information will describe our curriculum goals for the rest of the year.

Math
We are focusing our work right now on multiplication and division with decimals.  Students are really striving to master strategies for solving computation problems efficiently and effectively and to make sense of how decimals impact the outcomes. 

Multiplication and division will continue to be a focus for the rest of the year, but we will also have units around patterns and algebra as well as 2D geometry.  These links from our math curriculum are a great resource for games as well as support of the math understandings we will be focusing on.

Game Center

Math Tools

Math Words and Ideas

Reading and Writing
We have been focusing on the reading strategy of determining importance.  We have really tied this into our writing work of our Colonial America informational research reports.  Students are practicing researching topics around Colonial America and choosing what is important to remember and include.  We will end our year focusing on the strategy of synthesizing.  Synthesis is when readers put together all of the reading strategies to form thoughts, opinions, and conclusions about topics.  As we focus on synthesizing in reading we will be combining our own thinking with the research and information we gain about Colonial and Revolutionary America as writers.  Our final writing units will combine our reading strategies as well as writing goals in historical informational reports.

Social Studies
We are integrating our reading, writing, and social studies work to learn about the forming of our country through the Revolutionary War.  Students have been gaining background on early settlements, the thirteen colonies, and we are now looking at the events leading up to the Revolutionary War.  We will be examining multiple perspectives of this time period, major events, and analyzing the primary documents that formed our government.  It is a really engaging topic and I hope will lead to great dinner time conversations at your house!  If you've ever wanted to plan a trip to Washington, D.C. with your child, this is the summer to do it :)!

Spring Happenings!

It has been wonderful meeting with so many of you over the last two weeks to discuss your child's progress.  I love sharing all the growth happening and discussing the excitement of middle school and the goals for the rest of our year together.

I hope you all are able to have a relaxing Spring Break this next week and I'm excited to hear about all the amazing adventures the kids are going on when we return.  

The last quarter of fifth grade always FLIES by and I wanted to let you know about important events coming up, to at least get them on your calendar.  

State Testing

When we return from Spring Break, we will begin our state CMAS testing in language arts, math, and science.  Fifth graders take three sessions of each type of test.  It is really helpful if students are here on time and ready each day so that they can show their best thinking on their work and then we don't have to worry about completing make up tests outside of our regular testing times.   Our testing schedule will be as follows:

March 28th, 29th, 30th - English/Language Arts - 10:15 - 12:00

April 2nd, 3rd, 4th - Math - 10:45 - 12:15

April 9th, 10th, 11th - Science - 10:00 - 11:45

Other Dates to Know
Cimarron Visit: April 25th 1pm-2pm  (Students only - more information will be sent in April)
Puberty Talk: May 10th (Tentative - more information will be sent in April, including links to the videos that will be shown)
Field Day: May 11th
Outdoor Ed Trip: May 22nd (More information will be sent in May)
Last Day of 5th Grade Picnic and Slideshow - ALL FAMILIES ARE INVITED - May 25th (More information will be sent home in May)

Just for Fun!
The kids and I have been having a lot of fun listening to all kinds of science podcasts during our morning work this year.  Our favorites so far have been, "Wow in the World", "Brains On", and "Shabam".  This link has a list and description of all types of podcasts geared to kids. If you're on a road trip, driving around to all kinds of activities, or just want something interesting to listen to and make all of you smarter while you're cooking dinner, check these out!!

February News

Happy Heart Month!

Parent-teacher conferences will be on March 8th and March 15th.  The front office will send an email when the online scheduler opens for you to sign up.   If you'd like to meet to discuss your child's progress, please use this time for us to meet!

Our Valentine's Day party will be on the 14th at 2:30.  Everyone is welcome to join us.  Students need to bring a bag or box to collect goodies.  If they would like to pass out valentines, one needs to be given to every student.

Remember, there is no school on Friday the 16th as it is a professional development day for teachers.  Enjoy the long weekend!

Below is the focus of our learning at this time.  Please remember that you and your child can find each night's homework posted on this blog every night under the homework tab.

Math:
We are just about to finish our first unit on identifying, rounding, adding and subtracting decimals.  Students are doing a great job with thinking about place value to compare decimal amounts.  We are also using manipulatives such as base ten blocks and money to represent amounts less than one whole.  This a great time to have your children add up your bills, compare gas prices, estimate the total cost at a restaurant, or any other place you see and use decimal amounts.

Our next unit will focus on multiplication and division with fractions and decimals.  This is a great time for baking and halving or doubling recipes!  Also, as multiplication and division with fractions is something that you may need a review on as well, please don't forget about the amazing videos from our math program that I have shared previously.  You may use this link and watch all kinds of short videos on a variety of math topics and grades.  These are great to watch with your child and talk about together.

Also, about half of our class needs to continue practicing math facts at home as students are still not accurate and efficient with multiplication facts.  If you are not sure if your child is practicing or not, ask to see their latest quiz or send me an email.  Thank you for your help!

Reading/Writing
Our strategy focus at this time is on making inferences while we read.  As children are reading more difficult text with layers of meaning, they need to rely on their ability to infer to understand character motivations, author's purpose, theme, and perspectives.  We are working on using the clues found within the text as well as our own background knowledge, questions, and connections to infer.

As we work on these topics in reading, we are then working on responding to reading in writing.  We are applying our work in opinion writing to write and respond to a variety of topics in our texts with organized ideas and supporting evidence.  Students have written a lot of short responses at this time and we will now be choosing one of the shorter prompts to turn into a multi-paragraph response essay.

Students have done a wonderful job participating in book clubs with Newbery Award winning books.  We are finishing the books this week and will be doing final writing reflections around the books' themes and characters.  These are wonderful stories with strong messages and character changes.  Ask your child about their book when you have a chance to hear a great story!

Science
We are just wrapping up our earth science study.  We have examined the water cycle, the uneven heating of the earth and how both of those affect weather and climate.  Students also participated in a wonderful exploration of renewable energy resources through a collaborative teaching time with Mrs. Fleet, our technology teacher.  Ask your child about which energy source they proposed a new company should use, where in the United States they should place it, and the reasoning behind those choices.   Our next unit will be in the area of physical science and focus on mixtures and solutions.
 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful winter break and holiday season.  I certainly enjoyed the time with my friends and family.

It was great to be back with the students this last week and to get back into our learning lives.  We jumped right in with some wonderful books, a great review of fractions, and some New Year's Resolution writing.

Here is what we will be working on in the next few weeks.  As always, please let me know if you have questions or concerns.

Math
We are finishing our first unit on fractions.  At this point students should be able to identify and order fractions as well as add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators.  This week we will be talking about adding and subtracting mixed numbers and improper fractions.  Our next unit will relate the work we have done in fractions to computation with decimals.  There are some wonderful games on our Pearson website that students can access and play at home.  I would highly recommend playing these during the week with your child.

Last week, I assessed students on their quick use of multiplication facts.  At this point in fifth grade, students should have mastered quick recall of all facts from 0-12.  This was a goal in fourth grade and continued to be the focus of our math fact practice each week last semester.  It is crucial for students to have these facts memorized as it impacts every type of computation we are learning.  Those students who have not yet reached 90/100 math facts in five minutes on our test must continue to practice math facts for at least 30 min. a week as part of weekly homework.  Students who have reached this goal no longer need to do weekly math fact practice.  I will send home the math quizzes on Tuesday so you are aware of your child's progress.

Reading
We began this week with our next reading strategy focusing on inferring, or "reading between the lines".  We will be looking at how authors leave us clues and we need to use our background knowledge as well as the text clues to understand deeper meanings of the text.  You can help at home by asking questions that go beyond what the text is about:

• What do you think the author is trying to tell you?
• Why would the character behave that way?
• What is the theme or message of the story?
• What is happening in the story that the author might not be saying directly?

Students also chose new book club books and we began our reading assignments of those books.  They can bring these books home for reading minutes and have time in class to read them as well.  All of our books this time our Newborn Award books, so we will be looking at the qualities of the book that would earn them this award.

Writing

Our next unit of writing will be around responding to our reading.  We will be starting with organized paragraphs that respond to certain topics in our reading and then move on to essays about the text.  We will use the writing strategies that we focused on in our opinion writing unit to organize this essay writing as well with a huge emphasis on supporting our opinion of our reading material with evidence from the text.

Science/Social Studies

Our next unit of science is around earth science and we will be conducting experiments about the water cycle, heating of the earth, renewable and nonrenewable resources, and weather patterns.

Our next social studies focus will be on early explorers of North America and motivations for exploration and colonization.  

Homework

It is often hard to get back into the rhythm of school after winter break and then spring fever can sometimes set in!  Just a reminder that the expectations for homework are:

• 100 minutes of reading a week
• 30 minutes of math facts a week (if not passing math fact quizzes)
• a nightly math sheet
• weekly vocabulary or spelling homework

Our homework is listed every night on this blog under the homework tab. I have reassessed the students on their spelling levels and students will be getting a new spelling list this week.  We then alternate each week between spelling and Wordly Wise.

Cimarron

I will be meeting with the 6th grade teachers from Cimarron on Friday of this week and we will be sending home registration packets for students for next year.  Please be on the lookout for these packets on Friday in your child's backpack.  Also, Cimarron hosts parent "coffee chats" for parents of incoming 6th graders to answer all your questions about getting ready for next year.  I would highly recommend going to one of these if it is possible.  The dates and times are listed on the link below.  The students and I will go on a tour of Cimarron in April so the coffee chats are geared just for parents.

Coffee Chats at Cimarron