Updates and Announcements

I am so happy that our class is thriving this year! We have such a dynamic group of students who all contribute to our calm and safe classroom atmosphere.

We all loved seeing grandparents on campus for Grandparents Day on Friday. We are so grateful for their wisdom and expertise. We even had the opportunity of having a grandparent volunteer to help us prepare for our next history unit.

Thank you to the Kleenex and hand sanitizer classroom donation!

We began our typing unit last week. We get to use the computers every Friday to complete a typing lesson as a class. We are focusing on keeping fingers on the right spots on the keyboard. If your child would like to work ahead, email me and I can send you the link and their login information.

As this is the first “normal” week for a while, we will have our spelling test on Thursday instead of Friday.

Our week in learning

It’s back to grammar this week as we introduce our next part of speech, pronouns.  We will also be reviewing collective nouns and the simple subject and simple predicate.  In literature we will learn how authors use different methods of characterization to help the reader understand characters in the story.  Our new poem, “A Bird Came Down the Walk,” by Emily Dickinson was introduced last week and students should begin memorizing it.  I was very impressed with all of our recitations last week!

  

We will be reviewing the Scientific Inquiry process. There will be a test on Friday. This will cover the vocabulary words we have learned so far and asks students to apply the to the experiments we have done together in class. Keep in mind that Science Notebooks will be collected and graded on test day. This is a big science grade! The 5th Grade Science Fair project will be assigned this week as well. Be on the look out for it, as the packet requires a parent signature.

This week in history, we will be reviewing for and taking our unit test on World Lakes (Tuesday). We will set up our notebooks for our new unit on Ancient Meso-American Civilizations and begin studying the Maya. Students will have the opportunity to journal from the perspective of a Mayan person.

Our focus this week will be understanding different types of bar models and how to use those models as a way to help us solve word problems.  We will also be reviewing how to use different mental math strategies.