Congratulations to LAUREN for representing our class this week in the county-wide spelling bee!! She made it all the way to the third round while competing with over 50 other students. Way to go Lauren!

READING: Fourth grade wrapped up AUTHOR’S PURPOSE. We have expanded upon PIE (persuade, inform, entertain) to include EXPLAIN and DESCRIBE. Students work to identify the reasons author’s write and what clues/things authors include to help you see that and understand the purpose. You can ask your child about author’s purpose when they are reading ANYTHING! They should be able to tell you what the author was trying to do. (Ex: instructions for a new game, newspaper articles, novels, etc.). We also reviewed for our READING BENCHMARK which begins on TUESDAY! 🙂

Fifth grade wrapped up our instruction on nonfiction text structures. While explicit instruction on this is done, we will continue focusing on this for the rest of the year! Students worked to identify clue words and text feature clues to help them identify the structure. This is new information and pretty tricky. Students have a project that was assigned LAST WEEK. The sheet below came home with instructions. Some have mentioned needing some extra time, so I will bump this due date to TUESDAY FEBRUARY 4th! They need to write five articles (each in a different text structure) to create a magazine. We will continue going over examples in class! I will also help with a planning sheet but this should be able to be completed at home and independently. Students have notes in interactive notebooks they are welcome to bring home! Please let me know if you have any questions.

In writing, we are wrapping up our rough drafts of our DESCRIPTION/INFORMATIONAL writing! Fourth graders have researched a state, while fifth grade chose an animal. We have discussed important writing lessons that come along with informational writing like reliable sources, plagiarism, and THESIS STATEMENTS!

In VA studies we have wrapped up VS5 American Revolution! Students rocked the assessment for this unit. Please remember bottle buddy projects are due January 23rd!! We will spend next week reviewing EVERYTHING WE HAVE LEARNED THIS YEAR for our benchmark assessment on January 31st! 🙂 Look for review/homework to come home some nights!

In fifth grade, we wrapped up the SOUTHEAST REGION with our end of unit presentations and our states and capitals quiz. We are moving on to the NORTHEAST!

• FRIDAY JANUARY 17: VS5 Test (4th), SE States and Capitals Test (5th), BENCHMARK PEP RALLY @ 1:30
• MONDAY JANUARY 20th : NO SCHOOL; Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday
• BENCHMARK TESTING:
  -READING 4th/5th JANUARY 22, 24
  -VA Studies (4)/Science (5) JANUARY 31
  –MATH 4th/5th FEBRUARY 6, 7
• Thursday January 23: FAMILY LIFE LESSONS 8:30-10:40
  Thursday January 23: BOTTLE BUDDY PROJECTS DUE (4th)
• Monday January 27: STUDENT HOLIDAY
• Tuesday February 4th: 5th Grade Text Structure Magazine Project Due*
• Click here for information about ILL STUDENT POLICIES from Nurse Combee
  

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