We had another great week!
Next Saturday is Glen Allen Day!
Monday, September 30th is a half-day for students. This will be our Digital Citizenship Day! The students will rotate to all five 5th grade classrooms for a lesson on a particular element of digital citizenship. As we know, this is such an important part of using technology. Please let me know if you have questions!
“Cubs Read” (reading incentive program): Is your child interested in the “Cubs Read” program that offers incentives to students who go above and beyond the daily 2o minute reading homework requirement? If so, they should begin logging their minutes on the reading log/calendar that will be coming home on Tuesday, October 1.
MATH
This week we will continue to work with order of operations (5.7 & 6.6) and exponents and perfect squares (6.4). There will be a quiz on exponents and squares on Thursday, October 3rd. In class, the students will practice this skill playing a matching game, making cootie catchers, and illustrating square roots on graph paper. Your student has notes and examples of all of these skills in their math notebooks. I am reminding them to take their math notebooks home with them each day to complete homework correctly. Please continue to encourage your student to also use the resources on the Math page of this blog to practice and prepare. There will be an Order of Operations Test on Thursday, October 10th. Weekly Math (blue logic puzzle) is due on Wednesday, October 2nd. Remember that we will be going over Weekly Math throughout the week in class. Your student should be asking me for help when needed. If Tuesday night rolls around, and they are still not finished with this assignment they need to complete it at home. Up until that point please remind them that they need to ask for help in the classroom. This assignment is not a homework assignment but a classwork assignment. Thanks for your support with this! 🙂
LANGUAGE
This week we will continue working with using commonly confused words correctly. We will also practice using a web for prewriting, review parts of speech on MobyMax, and do lots of writing through seed writing activities and writing journals. The students can use Spelling City to help prepare for Word Trek. Their usernames are their login without the hcps. Their passwords are gaesspell. Please encourage your student to use Spelling City each night of the week to review for the test on Friday. My suggestion is that they complete one page of the homework and then get on Spelling City with the correct definitions and spelling in front of them each night. I feel that this is more productive than waiting until they have completed all of the homework to start using Spelling City.
We will vote on a name and begin designing the banner for our school Google Site this week. This will act as a blog for GAES. The students will decide what categories they want to include and then will write pieces for the site. We will trade off jobs each month. This has historically been a very popular activity each year! 🙂
READING
We will work with elements of plot this week. The students will use Running Out of Time to “build” a plot pyramid in their small groups. They will also focus on recognizing the main idea/theme of a passage. There will be a graded assignment on parts of a story vocabulary this week. Your student has notes on these concepts in their Reading notebooks. They are also using Bloom’s Taxonomy based questions to respond to the books they are reading during silent reading time.
On Thursday we will meet with two kindergarten classes to collaborate on a project. The students will listen to one of the No David stories and use this as a jumping off point to help the kindergartners come up with two rules for proper iPad usage. The fifth graders will help with writing the rules. The kindergartner will illustrate on of the rules on paper that will later be scanned into Book Creator. The fifth grader will illustrate a rule using Book Creator. These are going to be awesome!
The mystery book report is due on Thursday, October 31st. Your child has time in class to read their mystery. If they have finished reading their book, they may use their free time to start answering the questions. They can type these on Google Drive and then pull them up at home as well. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this assignment.
SCIENCE
There will be a fossil making activity this week! Also, this week we will finish our Rock unit (5.7) with some fun review activities and a test on Friday, October 4th. Your student has a study guide in their purple folder and notes in their Science notebook. Please encourage your student to use the resources on the Science page of this blog as well. The students will also finish their Rock Think-Tac-Toe this week. Ask your student what projects they chose for this assignment. 🙂
SOCIAL STUDIES
We have started learning about Henrico County’s economy. The students will work with a partner to discover what drew people to Henrico originally and what keeps our county growing today. Then they will work in groups of three to plan and create a commercial for one of Henrico’s products or offerings that they will film on Flipgrid. This is going to be fun!
IMPORTANT DATES
9/30 – Student half day/5th Grade Technology Day
10/3 – Exponents and Squares Quiz
10/4 – Rock Cycle Poster due
10/4 – Rocks Unit Test
10/5 – Glen Allen Day
10/10 – Order of Operations Test
10/14 – Student Holiday
10/31 Mystery Book Report due