Updates and announcements
I hope everyone’s 3 day weekend
was restful! Our house had various sicknesses, so we stayed in.
Speaking of sickness, we have a
lot of it going around. Thank you so much for keeping your children at home
when they have a fever. The nurse is a great resource if you are unsure when it
is ok to send your child back to school (24 hours fever-free without medicine,
etc.). This helps in preventing the spread of germs. We often see pockets of
students sick at the same time who sit in the same area of the classroom.
Our week in learning
Students will learn about the idiom “Take the bull
by the horns.”
Students will learn about the roots novus, ordo,
and saeculum. Students will be quizzed over these next week. Students should
expect a similar quiz every week.
Students learned about the poem “The Arrow and the
Song” on 1/15 and recite it on 1/29.
In Literature, students will read through chapter
12. There are periodic journal entries which are numbered, but do not happen
after every chapter. Students will do journal entries 7 and 8 this week. Please
send in the book as soon as possible.
In Grammar, students will write their sentence
outlines for their research essay. We will model this process in depth on
Tuesday. Sentence outlines are due on Thursday when we will begin their rough
drafts. If you have any questions, please reach out to a teacher. If you have
trouble finding a book resource, please reach out to Mrs. Lynch and we will
work out a solution.
In
science, we will be continuing our study of botany. Students will be studying
the structures of seeds and the process of germination, as well as the process
by which seed plants disperse their seeds. We will do some “unscrambling” on
Thursday to help reinforce the order of seed dispersal. Students will also
study the life cycles of gymnosperms. Throughout this unit, we will be working
on using appropriate scientific vocabulary for the reproductive structures of
plants. The study guide will be due February 7th and the test will be February
11th.
This
week in History, we will finish our instruction of the unit, “The Age of
Exploration”. We will discuss the English, French, and Dutch’s actions during
this time period, chiefly through further explorers, such as Sir Francis Drake,
Jacques Cartier, and Henry Hudson. We will close the unit by learning about the
slave trade, including when slaves were first brought from Africa by Europeans
both back to their countries and to the Americas, what that journey entailed,
and what life was like for slaves in those places. Study guides, from which a
question has been assigned each evening, are due on Tuesday, January 28th.
The unit test is on Wednesday, January 29th.
In math, students continue our unit on decimals.
This week, students will focus on dividing a decimal by a 2-digit number,
multiplying decimals by 0.1 and 0.01, and multiplying decimals by another
decimal. Graph paper is extremely helpful for students to use to keep track of
their decimals and place value. All students are allowed to use graph paper in
class, on homework, and on tests. Students may request graph paper from their
teachers. There will be math groups this week, Wednesday, 8:35-9:45.
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).
