5th Grade BLOG update for 10/14/22

 

Happy Friday Families!

It was great seeing you at conferences last week to discuss your student's academic and social emotional progress.  I loved that I was able to learn more about each student through the conversations we shared!  Now that we're deep into the first grading period, I am excited to see how much more our students will grow throughout the year.  There is so much to teach and so much to learn, but so little time!

Here are the concepts we will focus on as we work through over the next couple of weeks:

Literacy
Our students started our new shared text, The Road to Freedom. The story is narrated from the point of view of a young girl, Emma, who is traveling on the Underground Railroad with her mother in hopes of making it North to freedom. Our students are highly engaged throughout text and are having many great discussions related to topics raised within the story.  Using this shared text, we will work on literacy skills such as summarizing and identifying narrator's point of view.

**As a part of our Thursday Fun Fluency each week, your student ALWAYS has homework every Thursday evening to read the poems we worked on to someone at home with good fluency. Kindly sign the poems after your student has read them aloud. Students in the upper elementary grades still greatly benefit from fluency practice.

**Also, every Tuesday, students check in with me about their independent reading. Students are expected to be reading 20-30 minutes per day. I am happy to suggest titles and make recommendations as I have a substantial classroom library and I love when students borrow books!

Writing

After spending a learning cycle with a focus on narrative writing, next week will will begin to shift to nonfiction analytical writing. We will start to plan our first analytical paper, focusing on the topic of “The Benefits Of Cell Phones In Schools”. Students will work through the writing process step by step, writing the introduction, working on body paragraphs, and then conclusion. They will end with editing their work.

Math

We are continuing to focus on fractions as we make our way through our second unit in math. Our students are starting to move away from utilizing money and time to model the operations and are learning how to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators by finding common denominators and equivalent fractions (5.NF.1). Over the next two weeks, we will apply and stretch our knowledge in order to solve fractions story problems (5.NF.2). Those students who have already demonstrated their ability to add and subtract fraction with unlike denominators will participate in other activities to extend their knowledge of fractions in other areas.

Science

We wrapped up our discussions about ecosystems.  Over the last couple of weeks, we learned about consumers and the flow of energy through an ecosystem.  We learned that consumers must eat other animals in order to survive.  We also learned that the flow of energy starts at the sun and flows to the producers and then to the consumers.  Various discussions, activities, and investigations allowed us to create food chains that show the flow of energy from the sun to the owl.  

Social Studies

This week, we started our new Social Studies program!  The program focuses on students' voices and choices and the ability to connect to their own experiences and interests.  Through the inquiry-based learning model and engaging investigations, our students will build knowledge in history, civics, geography, and economics.  Our first discussions have focused around the perceptions of Indigenous American Cultures and learning how to formulate questions to help guide our students' learning on how to better honor the cultural heritage of this land. We used a process of visual note-taking as we learned new vocabulary in order to get a firmer grasp of the concepts and ideas being presented.

Upcoming Dates

Tuesday, October 25th - Early Release

Tuesday, November 8th - No School (Election Day)

Friendly Reminders

**Please remind your student to charge his/her iPad and Logitech Crayon every night.

**If your child participates in orchestra or band, please remind him/her to bring their instrument on their lesson day.

**Please remember to send your student with a healthy snack - nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!

**Please continue to have your student practice their multiplication facts up to 12.