March 10, 2016
Dear Fifth Grade Parents,
Thank you so much for coming to the Camp Seymour meeting last night. We are very excited about our 2016 trip! Please turn in the field trip permission slip and the two medical forms by April 4th. The following is a curriculum update for the week of March 14 – 17, 2016.
Reminders:
March 11th – Disco Dress up Day – Auction Theme
March 17th – Fifth Grade Leads the St. Patrick’s Day Mass 8:45am
March 17th – Second Trimester Report Cards
March 18th – No School – Teacher In-service
Religion
Our Grade 5 Service Project for Lent is to collect funds for our adopted children in Uganda. Please remind students to donate what they can!
We are currently working on the Chapter 17, The Liturgy of the Word. Students have completed the study guide in class. They have also made a replica of the order of the Liturgy of the Word chart from the textbook. The test for this chapter is on Wednesday March 16th.
Math
3/11 Ch. 8, L 1, Fractions & Division
3/14 – Ch. 8 L. 2, Greatest Common Factor
3/15 – Ch. 8 L. 3, Simplest Form
3/16 – Ch. 8 L. 4, Problem Solving (Guess, Check, Revise)
3/17 – No Math – MASS (Review worksheets Ch. 8 L. 1-4)
3/21 – Ch. 8 L. 1-4 Check My Progress
Social Studies
Today students took the Chapter 9 test. On Friday 3/11, students will use 5A & 5B Google classroom to access a Google doc with a link to a fun web-site about Williamsburg. Students will complete the Google doc in class.
Next week we will be moving on to Chapter 10, Tensions Grow Between the Colonies and Great Britain. In this lesson students will learn about 6 events that led up to the Revolutionary War. Students will be working in pairs to complete the Interactive Notebook Reading Notes in class.
Reading
5th graders are enjoying our current historical fiction novel, Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry. They are participating in very interesting discussions as we think about life during the German Occupation in Denmark. Often, this book sparks a new interest in World War II, Lois Lowry and/or the genre of historical fiction.
Science
Students will start a unit on motion and design. They will focus on the use of drawings in the design process. Students will draw vehicles they build from K’Nex building pieces. In small groups they will use their visual and spatial perception skills to build a vehicle pictured in a technical drawing. Next students will focus on force and motion by conducting experiments to determine how applying a force to an object changes the motion of the object.
Language Arts
This week in language arts the focus for spelling was different suffixes. In grammar students learned about three specific types of pronouns: indefinite, possessive, and interrogative. Students submitted the final draft of their character description essay this week and we began talking about personal narratives. Next week students will decide on a topic for a short personal narrative and will write the beginning of the essay.