Our week in learning

Students will learn about the idiom “Eleventh Hour”.

Students will learn about the roots arcus, circum, kyklos, and peri on Wednesday. Students will be quizzed over these roots next Wednesday, plus a surprise one from a previous week. They should expect a similar quiz every week over the previous week’s roots.

Students learned about “The Tyger” on Wednesday 8/23, and recite it on Wednesday, 9/11. Students will learn about the poem “Some Opposites” on Wednesday, 9/11, and recite it on Wednesday, 9/25.

In Literature, we will read through chapter 12 in “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, working on vocabulary and summarizing every chapter. Students will also work through discussion questions in groups. 

In Grammar, students will practice classifying and diagramming sentences with adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases this week, gradually adding in more words and phrases and creating longer sentences. There will be a grammar quiz on Wednesday, 9/11. Students will practice sentence scrambles on Thursday and Friday, then creating ad-lib type sentences using classifications. There will be practice quizzes going home for homework. The questions on those are very similar to the test.

This week in science, we are concluding our study of Scientific Inquiry. Monday students will turn in the study guide and go over answers in class, and Tuesday they will play a review game. Thursday, they will take their tests. On Friday, we will begin our study of Chemistry that will take up the rest of second quarter by studying the periodic table and how it is arranged.

This week in history we will begin Unit 3: The Renaissance. Study guides will be handed out this week, and homework each evening will be to answer questions corresponding to that day’s lesson. We will discuss the transition from the Medieval Period to the Renaissance, including the invention of the printing press. We will also learn about the cities of Florence, Rome, and Venice and their role in the Renaissance. On Wednesday for U.S. Geography we will be discussing the states in the Great Plains: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

In math, students will continue working on our unit on Whole Numbers, focusing on multiplying and dividing by 2 digit numbers, word problems, and bar models. To keep work neat, students are encouraged to use graph paper to ensure their columns are accurate while dealing with large numbers. When a “test b” (multiplication test) is assigned for homework, it contains questions very similar to a quiz the following day. We take a lot of low-stakes math quizzes in fifth grade. All math workbook assignments are half of every type of problem. Please keep in mind that students may do test corrections on any math quiz for partial credit (fill in the blank sheets, not multiple choice homework sheets). Math groups will continue this Wednesday, 9/11, 8:35-9:45. Please let me know if you are able to attend and I’ll make sure to have enough keys.