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
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
