Important Announcements
~ I have a stack of graded papers that I meant to send home after the holiday break but completely forgot to. They will all be coming home this week. The only one that needs to be signed and returned in the literary essay.
~ Starting this week, we will be having a weekly vocabulary test, in addition in our word study and grammar. This will be a list of twelve words that I will give the class on Monday (Tuesday this week) and we will have a quiz on Friday. I will not be doing anything with the words in class. It will be the students' responsibility to learn the words throughout the week. I will put them up on Quizlet, as well as providing a printed copy to every child. This will not be a spelling test, although it is a good idea for them to learn the spelling as well. I will be testing on the definitions of the words. The goal is to build vocabulary in general, but also for the ERB's. This is similar to the format the MS uses, so it will also help prepare the students for what's to come. The quizzes will be similar to the vocabulary quiz that come home on Friday consisting of a combination of multiple choice, matching, true/false, and fill in the blank questions. Please encourage your child to not put off studying until Thursday night.
~ Along those same lines, we will be starting WPP this week. WPP is a programed designed to help students practice for the WrAP, the writing portion of the ERB's. I will be setting it up in class today and it will be our assigned writing homework for the week. I will tell the students which prompt to write on and the program will provide immediate feedback. Once feedback has been provided, there are activities and videos for the students to use to improve their skills. For those student who used this program last year, their scores may be a bit of a shock. The 3rd - 4th prompt is narrative based, allowing for creative story telling. On top of that the same prompt is given for 3rd and 4th, so last year they were the oldest students using it. This year, the prompts are essay based and designed for 5th and 6th and the grading and expectations are much more difficult. Please don't let your child get discouraged by his or her first score. This week they will be completing it without any instruction. That way we have a raw score to work from. Next week, I will be teaching them how to make their essays stronger, as well as how to use the provided tools. Encourage your child to look at what they did well and to see the "grades" as suggestions to make it stronger, not as a way to judge themselves. The website for WPP is www.wpponline.com . Every student has their own individual login.
~ There will be no Wednesday tutorial this week. However, I will be doing an in-class review during math tomorrow.
~ Friday is our field trip to the High Museum and The Varsity. We will leave school around 9:00 and be back by 1:00. Students DO NOT need to bing money.
Math
We will be taking our unit 6 math assessment on Thursday and Friday. We will be taking the mid-year assessment next Monday. I will send home a review sheet after the unit 6 test on Thursday. However, there is no tutorial or extra review for this because it's supposed to be a cold assessment of what the students have mastered so far this year. This is true across the fifth grade, so no one has an upper hand. I keep telling them, as long as they've been working hard and trying all year, they have nothing to worry about.
Once we finish unit 6 students will be starting their second math journal,... and though they may try to convince you that I told them it's acceptable to burn their first math journal, it's simply not true. They should hang onto it through the end of the year- just in case they need to refer back to it!
Social Studies
We will spend this week continuing to learn about the Bill of Rights and how the Framers of the Constitution recognized the need to make sure one branch of government doesn't hold too much power (checks and balances). Then we are off to Westward Expansion!! We'll learn about the best real estate deal in history (the Louisiana Purchase!!) and the exploration westward, including the infamous travels of Lewis & Clark.
Writing
In writing, we will continue planning our fantasy stories. More that any other fiction genre, fantasy requires a ton of pre-planning. This week, students will be inventing their characters, and created mini-bios for each one. They will be designing their settings, using descriptive language that helps the reader to feel like their inside the fantasy world. Finally, they will be determining their problem and it's solution. These should all be written in their writer's notebooks, which I will be checking.
Our word study this week will focus on the suffixes -ian, -or, -er, -ist. We will also be beginning a grammar study on appositives. Below is the list of vocabulary words for this week.
abhor
balm
choreographer
debate
exotic
fatigue
genealogy
hideous
identify
indignent
jeer
legendary
Quizlet link: http://quizlet.com/_jtb3n
Reading
This week in reading, we will be learning how to expand conversations of one topic, continually building on others ideas until the topic is exhausted, before moving on to a new area of conversation. We will also be thinking about how the theme of good verses evil that runs through all fantasy books is related to real life. We will be discussing the fact that our books are not just about what happens to the characters, they are also about the life lessons that our characters learn and how they change throughout the book. This is particularly interesting to study in a series, such as Harry Potter or The Lightening Thief.
~ I have a stack of graded papers that I meant to send home after the holiday break but completely forgot to. They will all be coming home this week. The only one that needs to be signed and returned in the literary essay.
~ Starting this week, we will be having a weekly vocabulary test, in addition in our word study and grammar. This will be a list of twelve words that I will give the class on Monday (Tuesday this week) and we will have a quiz on Friday. I will not be doing anything with the words in class. It will be the students' responsibility to learn the words throughout the week. I will put them up on Quizlet, as well as providing a printed copy to every child. This will not be a spelling test, although it is a good idea for them to learn the spelling as well. I will be testing on the definitions of the words. The goal is to build vocabulary in general, but also for the ERB's. This is similar to the format the MS uses, so it will also help prepare the students for what's to come. The quizzes will be similar to the vocabulary quiz that come home on Friday consisting of a combination of multiple choice, matching, true/false, and fill in the blank questions. Please encourage your child to not put off studying until Thursday night.
~ Along those same lines, we will be starting WPP this week. WPP is a programed designed to help students practice for the WrAP, the writing portion of the ERB's. I will be setting it up in class today and it will be our assigned writing homework for the week. I will tell the students which prompt to write on and the program will provide immediate feedback. Once feedback has been provided, there are activities and videos for the students to use to improve their skills. For those student who used this program last year, their scores may be a bit of a shock. The 3rd - 4th prompt is narrative based, allowing for creative story telling. On top of that the same prompt is given for 3rd and 4th, so last year they were the oldest students using it. This year, the prompts are essay based and designed for 5th and 6th and the grading and expectations are much more difficult. Please don't let your child get discouraged by his or her first score. This week they will be completing it without any instruction. That way we have a raw score to work from. Next week, I will be teaching them how to make their essays stronger, as well as how to use the provided tools. Encourage your child to look at what they did well and to see the "grades" as suggestions to make it stronger, not as a way to judge themselves. The website for WPP is www.wpponline.com . Every student has their own individual login.
~ There will be no Wednesday tutorial this week. However, I will be doing an in-class review during math tomorrow.
~ Friday is our field trip to the High Museum and The Varsity. We will leave school around 9:00 and be back by 1:00. Students DO NOT need to bing money.
Math
We will be taking our unit 6 math assessment on Thursday and Friday. We will be taking the mid-year assessment next Monday. I will send home a review sheet after the unit 6 test on Thursday. However, there is no tutorial or extra review for this because it's supposed to be a cold assessment of what the students have mastered so far this year. This is true across the fifth grade, so no one has an upper hand. I keep telling them, as long as they've been working hard and trying all year, they have nothing to worry about.
Once we finish unit 6 students will be starting their second math journal,... and though they may try to convince you that I told them it's acceptable to burn their first math journal, it's simply not true. They should hang onto it through the end of the year- just in case they need to refer back to it!
Social Studies
We will spend this week continuing to learn about the Bill of Rights and how the Framers of the Constitution recognized the need to make sure one branch of government doesn't hold too much power (checks and balances). Then we are off to Westward Expansion!! We'll learn about the best real estate deal in history (the Louisiana Purchase!!) and the exploration westward, including the infamous travels of Lewis & Clark.
Writing
In writing, we will continue planning our fantasy stories. More that any other fiction genre, fantasy requires a ton of pre-planning. This week, students will be inventing their characters, and created mini-bios for each one. They will be designing their settings, using descriptive language that helps the reader to feel like their inside the fantasy world. Finally, they will be determining their problem and it's solution. These should all be written in their writer's notebooks, which I will be checking.
Our word study this week will focus on the suffixes -ian, -or, -er, -ist. We will also be beginning a grammar study on appositives. Below is the list of vocabulary words for this week.
abhor
balm
choreographer
debate
exotic
fatigue
genealogy
hideous
identify
indignent
jeer
legendary
Quizlet link: http://quizlet.com/_jtb3n
Reading
This week in reading, we will be learning how to expand conversations of one topic, continually building on others ideas until the topic is exhausted, before moving on to a new area of conversation. We will also be thinking about how the theme of good verses evil that runs through all fantasy books is related to real life. We will be discussing the fact that our books are not just about what happens to the characters, they are also about the life lessons that our characters learn and how they change throughout the book. This is particularly interesting to study in a series, such as Harry Potter or The Lightening Thief.