Updates and announcements

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Mine was full of candy making and eval writing. One of my favorite parts of the season is making candy for my private violin students and co-workers. I can tell the students are excited for the holidays coming up.

Check out the wish list! We are running very low on hand sanitizer and kleenex.

Please continue to let me know if you student will be out of school. My goal (same as every year), is to have my evaluations done before we all leave for Winter Break. My biggest obstacles are make-up assessments and we are all caught up as of today! I love getting to write about your children and I want to make sure they are a true reflection of your children’s hard work this year.

Our week in learning

This week, students will learn about the idiom “A penny saved is a penny earned”.

The roots test over #26-50 will be on 12/12.

In Literature, we will finish the year with a poetry unit. Students will learn about different literary techniques, such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, metaphors, personification, and symbolism. They will also find these literary devices in poems.

In Writing and Grammar, students will take their mid-year grammar test on Tuesday, 12/4. Throughout the week, we will finish our fun essay “Wait, wait, don’t shoot!”. The students will take on the point of view of a turkey around the holidays who is trying to convince the farmer to eat something else for dinner. Students will hand write their final drafts in class, then type them. Students will also have their first writing workshop of the year. On Wednesday, students will spend most of the day going through the writing process and getting feedback throughout the steps. This is in preparation for AZMerit, where students will be expected to write a 5 paragraph essay in one sitting in April.

Students will continue studying cells this week. We will learn about the organelles in the plant cell and how it differs from the animal cell, and learn about how cells divide in mitosis. On Thursday, students will do a cell cycle activity in to help solidify the steps of the cell cycle. Due to how short this unit is, students will have an open notes assessment on the 18th. We are looking forward to seeing all our families at the 5th grade science fair on Wednesday, December 12th from 5:00PM to 6:30PM in the Arete gym to display all of the 5th grades science projects!

This week in History, students will present two times. On Monday and Tuesday, students will present their group projects on feudal Japan. Chapters 1-3 will present on Monday, and chapters 4-5 will present on Tuesday. Wednesday there will be no History, as it will be a day for an extensive writing workshop. On Thursday and Friday, students will present their State brochure projects, which are all due on Thursday.

In math, we will continue our unit on Perimeter, Area, and Surface Area. We will look into the area of a parallelogram, and the surface area of rectangular prisms. The final test of the quarter will be on Monday, 12/17. Please note that we will have frequent quizzes in math. When a “b” quiz comes home for homework, that means there will likely be a quiz the next day. This means there will be frequent, low stakes math quizzes. There will be no math groups this week.