September 16, 2010

September 16, 2010

Dear Fifth Grade Students & Parents,

We had a very productive week in 5A. I hope all of you have a wonderful time at Westfest this weekend! The following is a brief curriculum update:

Reminder: Every Wednesday is a 2:15pm dismissal, please make sure to pick up your children by 2:25pm….a note from the office!

Math
Monday 9/20-Lesson 14, Missing Numbers in Subtraction
Tuesday 9/21-Lesson 15, Making a Multiplication Table
Wednesday 9/22-Test #2
Thursday 9/23-Lesson 16, Story Problems about Separating

Religion
The Chapter 1 test will be on Monday 9/20. Please study the study guide and reread the chapter to prepare for this test. We will then move on to Chapter 2, Worshiping God. The study guide for this chapter will be passed out next Thursday.

Social Studies 5th
The fifth graders have completed Lesson 1. They took the Lesson 1 test today. On Tuesday, we will begin Lesson 2, Native Americans and Their Land. The objectives for this lesson are:
• Trace the migration routes of American Indians into North America.
• Summarize key features of four environments.
• Examine historical events recorded in Sioux pictographs that show how geography affected the lives of the Sioux.
•Identify ways in which the Inuits adapted to their Arctic environment.
•Learn about how one Native American group believes the world began.

Reading – 5th Graders have enjoyed reading Faith and Eddie from our Scott Foresman texts. One of our goals this week was to spend more time oral reading to develop expression, smoothness and pace. Ask your child to read a page to you out of his or her chapter book! This week students created flash cards for their vocabulary words. This is a great study strategy that can be used in content areas across the curriculum. We will have our first Selections Test on Thursday, 9/16. It will cover the vocabulary and comprehension questions from the story.

Language Arts: Students are going to begin a fun project involving iMovie and adjectives! We will be creating an advertisement mimicking the iPad ads. The fifth graders need to decide on a product to advertise (a person, place or thing) and then choose 7 awesome adjectives to use in the ads. We will work on this project during LA and during Technology class periods over the next few weeks. For homework, students need to decide on their ad topic/object by Monday. For example, the topic may be “boots” or “school” or “Hawaii.” Images will be taken from the internet, so students can keep that in mind when deciding on a topic, making sure they choose something that will be easy to find images for.

Spelling homework is due on Monday. Our test will also be on Monday. The assignment is posted on my webpage.

Science
Students will take a quiz based on notes in their 5-subs and experiments with pendulums next Thursday. Students begin Ch. 4, Astronomy, in their science texts. Students will make a model of the solar system to explore the relative size of different planets.

Have a great week!

Ms. Semandiris