September 8, 2016
Dear Fifth Grade Parents,
We have been very busy here in 5A! Students are working so hard academically as well as socially! The following is a curriculum update for the week of 9/12 – 9/16.
*Normally, your child will bring a Boomerang envelope home. This week there is nothing for the Boomerang so we will begin to bring those home next week on 9/15.
Reminders:
9/9 – Free Dress – Fifth Grade Wear the Color Purple! (Magazine Sale Assembly 2pm)
9/16 – Noon Dismissal/Westfest
Religion
We are working on Chapter 1, Longing for God. In this chapter students will examine the importance of material goods vs. things that we need that money can’t buy. Students will be learning that having a relationship with God is the way to true happiness.
Math (Semandiris)
Monday – Ch. 1 Lesson 6, Place Value Through Thousandths
Tuesday – Ch. 1 Lesson 7, Compare Decimals
Wednesday – Ch. 1 Lesson 8, Order Whole Numbers and Decimals
Thursday – Chapter Review
Friday – Chapter 1 Test
Social Studies
The fifth graders are busy learning about Lesson 1, The Geography of the United States. Students will work in pairs to complete their Interactive Notebooks in class for Maps A-D.
Students will be able to:
Label:
- 4 Hemispheres
- Compass Rose
- Equator
- Prime Meridian
- 7 Continents
- 4 Oceans
- Using: latitude/Longitude to find locations on the Earth’s surface
- Define and be able to locate on a map: 14 geographical terms, (bay, ocean, peninsula.)
- Be able to identify 15 major physical features of the USA
I.E:(Mississippi R., Sierra Nevada, The Great Plains.
Reading
It’s been wonderful meeting the 5th Graders in Reading class this week. What a fabulous group of students! We have jumped right in to the adventure novel, Hatchet. This is an exciting story of survival, written by Gary Paulsen. We will be completing a wide variety of activities throughout the novel to enhance the students’ comprehension and enjoyment of the story. I have asked students to share our Class Rules sheet with parents and to return it this week with signatures. Thank you.
Science
Students will learn how to conduct controlled experiments by experimenting with variables that affect the behavior of pendulums they have built in class. They will graph their results in a variety of ways and use their graphs to predict the behavior of different lengths of pendulums they construct. Students will take a quiz based on their experiences with pendulums (also called swingers) and vocabulary notes they have copied in their 5-subject notebooks on Tuesday (9/20).
Language Arts
This week in Language Arts students were busy reviewing policies and procedures as well as starting on writing pre-assessment about someone they admire or a pair of magical goggles. This pre-assessment will generate a base from which students will grow as writers throughout the year. Next week students will begin a fictional narrative writing unit focusing on plot and its structure in stories. Students will focus on effectively writing these stories with description and dialogue.