Good Morning,

We have a busy week ahead. The students did great on their animal adaptation papers and presentations. Grades will be coming home for those this week. Wednesday is our annual portfolio review day where the students will be in lunch room to go through all of their writing with you. I hope you can make it. The 4th grade safeties will begin training this week with the 5th graders.

Our week is as follows:

Spelling: We are looking at the chunks “audi” and “anti”. Our words are: auditorium, antibodies, antiseptic, audiovisual, antidote, comparison, calibrate, displacement, separation, balances.

Math: We are working on pre-algebra and coordinate plane problem solving for the next few weeks.

Writing- We are starting a genre study on science fiction and each student will be writing their own science fiction piece.

Reading- We are still working on vocabulary acquisition and usage. We also will start looking at Science Fiction books. Their book clubs will continue to meet and work on their own strategies.

Science- Our study of the human body continues as we start looking at the skeletal system and all it does for us.

Camp is next week so make sure you let us know if you have any questions while you start to pack up your student’s things.

Garden Club will meet tomorrow unless it is raining. If it is raining in the morning, the ground has been too muddy to work and will not meet.

Have a great day!

Hello parents,

This week we have many things going on. The students are all buzzing about middle school and the exciting things ahead for them. We are starting to prep for camp but we still have a full week of work. We are starting human growth and development. Remember to turn in those slips if you DO NOT want your students to participate, by tomorrow. Garden club is meeting Tuesday and the students are free to bring things to plant if they wish.

This week:

Spelling: We are focusing on the meaning of Greek blends like ann and enn. Our words are anniversary, perennial, announce, bicentennial, annihilate, nervous, excretory, reproductive, investigation and democratic.

Math: We are moving into unit 10 which is very tricky for students. The unit focuses on pre-algebra, reading graphs and creating patterns.

Writing:We are going to work on publishing pieces that students have already written in order to get ready for our parent meet the author day. Students will be bringing home information sheets on the portfolio reviews soon.

Science-We are starting to look at individual body systems.

Reading- Students are continuing to work on individual strategies and they are focusing on acquisition and usage of grade level vocabulary.

More updates will come as the week goes on. Have a wonderful week!

I can’t believe it is already May. Our days are flying by. I hope the weather starts to match our month! We can also celebrate because all of our testing is finished and the kids worked very hard. I am sure they are happy it is over as well. We are getting back to our regular schedule. Some big things coming up is a math unit test on Friday and their animal adaptation projects are also due on Friday.

Spelling- We are looking at  the Latin and Greek roots ‘ambi’ and ‘aero’. Our words are ambiguous, aerodynamic, ambidextrous, aerosol, ambivalent, digestive, circulatory, respiratory, skeletal, and muscular.

Math- We are finishing our unit on calculating volume and using coordinate planes.

Writing- We are finishing our animal adaptation papers and Google Slide shows.

Science- We are starting our unit on the systems of the human body.

Reading-We are continuing on with our strategy groups and we will be working on acquisition and usage of grade level vocabulary.

Remember that camp balance is due and we have garden club tomorrow. Permission slips to join garden club will be coming home today and need to be returned tomorrow if your student wishes to attend without you there.

Have a great week!

Hello everyone!

I can’t believe we are in our last week of April already. The time is flying by very quickly. This is our last week of testing. I know the students and I will be happy when it is over. We have the NWEA Language today, Social Studies MSTEP Tuesday and Wednesday and lastly the NWEA Science on Thursday. We are going to be having a small celebration on Friday afternoon to celebrate their success at finishing. I will post some more information about that as it gets closer.

We are still moving ahead in most subjects this week. There is also a Garden Club meeting on Tuesday to work outside in the school garden. It is 3:45-4:45 and everyone is invited. We are making great progress out there. We have removed over 25 bags of yard waste and trash already. We will be able to focus on creating the outdoor classroom space soon. I hope we see you and your students there if possible. For our subject area work, we are working on:

Spelling- Abbreviations of common words. The students must be able to spell the word and the matching abbreviation. They will only be given the word on Friday. Our words are doctor Dr., junior and Jr., department and dept., highway and hwy., Missus and Mrs., federalism, Constitution, ratification, rebellion and evaluate.

Math- We are solving story and distance problems using multiple points on a coordinate plane.

Reading-Students are working on their last book with their current strategy group. Book groups will be re-grouped near the end of the work and all students will have new reading strategies to work on. These strategies will come directly from their last NWEA tests.

Science- We will begin looking at the body systems of the human body. This will be the focus of our last science unit this year.

Writing- Students are still working on finishing their animal research papers and Google Slide shows with partners. They will be working in class until the end of the week and then anything left to do will be homework. They will be presenting these next week. We also have a district writing prompt that the students will be completing on Wed. and Thursday.

Have a great day!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy some of the beautiful weather we are having. This is week two of our testing. We have NWEA Reading today and tomorrow starts ELA M-STEP. Once ELA MSTEP is finished, we will have NWEA Math on Friday. Our week is a bit more limited than normal in our regular work. Here is the plan but it might change as testing changes.

Spelling- We are looking at words with prefixes. Our words are quadrilateral, unicycle, polyhedron, biweekly, millimeter, diameter, ratio, analyze, conclusion and knowledge.

Math-We are working on finding the volume of rectangular prisms.

Science-We are finishing out science unit.

Reading-Students are finishing their book club books and we will be working on writing constructed responses.

4-21-16 is the upper grades Music concert at 7:00 p.m.

Have a great week!

Good morning everyone!

I hope everyone had a restful weekend! This week we are starting our M-STEP testing with all of the 5th graders across the state. We will start with the Math portion on Tuesday and Wednesday. If anyone would like to send in a healthy pre-portioned snack or juice box, we are accepting donations. We are hoping to give each student a snack and drink before each test. We will be in the lab for testing so we will not be able to use any snacks that need refrigeration or to be served/poured. Please make sure that students are well rested and had a good breakfast before coming to school each day. I look forward to seeing all of the progress the kids have made!

Our regular schedule will be different for the next few weeks. We will still have spelling but we are going to be rearranging everything else. Our spelling words follow the altered sound pattern of the -tial and -cial word chunks. Our words are essential, influential, confidential, judicial, crucial, algebraic, circumference, amendment, confederation and compromise.

Math-We are starting unit 9 which focuses on coordinate planes and ordered pairs of numbers.

Writing-Students are working on an animal adaptation research project which will continue for the next few weeks.

Science-Students will be finishing the animal adaptation unit this week and will be tested on Friday.

Reading-Students are continuing to work in their strategy groups and most will be getting a new book/strategy this week.

Have a great week!

Good morning everyone. I hope everyone had a fantastic break! The week flew by. It is hard to believe that it is April already! We are getting right back into our schedule. Thursday at 6:00 we are having a meeting for anyone interested in helping take the Nowlin Garden back over, behind the school. We are going to start working on that as soon as the weather breaks so hopefully we can set up some dates for garden work and come up with a plan. Next week we start M-Step and NWEA testing again. Students should continue to practice their toughest subjects each night on Mobymax. The program locates their missing skills and reteaches them.

This week:

Spelling: We are looking at multisyllabic words that have a changed letter sound. Our words are authenticity, electricity, muscular, resignation, designate, reflection, capacity, associative, prism, and liter.

Math: We are finishing unit 8 this week which focuses on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions with mixed numbers.

Writing: We are starting a research project on animal adaptations. Students will be researching and writing a research paper. They will then create a Google Slide presentation and will present to the class with a group.

Science: We are starting to look at fossils, finding fossils and what fossils tell us about past events. Our unit test will be next week.

Reading: We are continuing in our reading groups and we will looking at the parts of a poem. We will be focusing on stanzas and understanding the meaning of figurative language.

Have a great week!

Good morning everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful weather yesterday and that your break is off to a great start. I just wanted to send a reminder that all 5th grade students are encouraged to practice math, language and science on Mobymax this break. We are asking each student in the 5th grade to earn between 200-400 points in our 5th grade, all subjects, Spring Break contest. This will help prepare them and keep them sharp for MSTEP and NWEA Testing when we return. They can view their point total under the contest tab when they are logged into Mobymax. They can also practice the sites that went home and are posted on their Google Classroom. Reading 30 minutes a night is still extremely important as well. If you have questions about any of this, let me know! Thank you and enjoy your week.

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. We have a busy week this week. Friday is Bingo for Books in the evening. We hope everyone can make it for a fun evening of games and books. We also have the school book fair this week. Students will have a chance to shop on Thursday morning. We are also fundraising for the Artic Fox this week. Students have the chance to bring in $1.00 bills in the morning and to go stuff them in another room’s donation box. The room with the least amount of money in their box at the end of the week will win a prize. Any missing or late work that your students owe me is due by Friday. Please check with your student and Parent Connect to see if there is anything you would like done for the third report card.

In our classroom this week, we are working on:

Spelling: multisyllabic words that end in ‘ant’. Our words are intolerant, contestant, significant, abundant, tolerant, advantages, latitude, longitude, instinct, and species.

Math: We are continuing on our work in unit 8 which focuses on adding and subtracting mixed number fractions. These are always difficult for students so please take a minute to ask you student how they are doing with it.

Science: We are starting to look at adaptations and animal survival. We are figuring out how specific animal characteristics help aid in their survival in certain environments.

Writing: We are moving full speed ahead in our unit of poetry. We have a few more styles of poetry that we will be working on and then we will be publishing our poems. Ask your students what their favorite new type of poetry is.

Reading: Almost every student has a new book for their strategy group. We meet either daily or every other day depending on the strategy we are working on. They have reading homework every time we meet although some students finish it during our Daily 5 rotations. As a class, we are working on summarizing. Students should still be reading daily and during March, they should be filling out their reading logs for the school-wide reading tracking. We also still have time slots available for March is Reading Month so please come in a read to the class if you have time. The students love having guest readers!

Have a great week!