week at a glance

Week at a glance:
Math: We are working on expanded, unit, word, and standard forms of numbers up to millions and as small as thousandths.

Reading: We are continuing to do Main Idea and Details of short articles. This week, they will have a quiz about main idea and details.

Science: We are continuing discussing science vocabulary specifically models and types of observations.

Social studies: They are working on government with Ms Wilson.

FYI: Every week they will have an assignment on ReadWorks.org, a writing assignment, and word work to finish during Daily 5. If they do not finish this work, it will be homework over the weekend. They are welcome to do their word work all week at home if they would like. However, I would like them to use daily 5 time for writing and readworks so I can help them if need be.

If I notice that your child is consistently not finishing one or more of their daily 5 assignments, I will notify you by dojo message or phone call.

Thank you for your continuous support!

What’s happening in 5th

Math: We are working on place value of decimals, exponents, and expanded notation of numbers.

Reading: Our focus is main idea and details.

Writing: This week we are writing opinion essays about our favorite famous person.

Science: Our focus for the first unit is science vocabulary that we will use this year.

Social Studies: Ms Wilson is discussing the Branches of Government.

reading logs

Parents –

A note is coming home today about biblionasium.com. This will be our reading logs for the school year. We’ve already logged in at school to try it out, but I want everyone to try it at home, too. The note today will have the parent account information, so you can see their reading minutes, what books they are reading, etc. This is a district initiative, so everyone in the district has to be using some kind of reading log, and we figured online is much less likely to be lost than a paper copy. 🙂 The kids have their own login info on a sticker in the back of their planners.

Please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks!

Last week of February

I can’t believe how quickly this year is going by, it’s almost March!

Just an FYI about what’s going on in each subject area.

Reading: We are working on summarizing. We are doing whole group things with summarizing, and we will eventually be summarizing our chapter books. The kids are doing so much better than they had been with reading to self ever since we started DEAR time. I’m really proud of them.

Science: We are still working on Earth Systems, then we will start on biomes. There are so many great connections being made!

Social Studies: We are finishing up about the 13 colonies and will be starting our new unit soon!

Writing: We are working on opinion writing, specifically letters to the editor. We will be doing a writing as a class about if Pluto should be a planet, then we will do another opinion essay afterward.

Voracious reading!

So now that I was here after the ice day and sick day… we got started on our challenge of Voracious Reading! Today, your child should be coming home with at least one chapter book of their choice. If they have internet access at home, they should be logging their time read on biblionasium everyday like most kids have, if they do not, they know they can log it on their chromebook when they get to class, but they need to keep track of it in their planner or reading notebooks.

Encourage your child to tell you about their books! They all started them today, so they should have a few pages down to tell you at least a little bit about what’s happening.

And I know they are in 5th grade, BUT a really, really helpful part of vocabulary acquisition is listening to someone read. I read to them everyday (unless something weird happens with our schedules), but imagine if you read their chapter books *together* at home! It would be a great bonding time for you and your kiddo in their last year of elementary school. <3 If anyone is interested in examples of comprehension questions and book discussion questions to use with your child, I will post some here!

We are apart again!

Well, it looks like a full week of school isn’t going to happen this week. haha… please remind your child to log into biblionasium.com today to log their reading. If you need their log in information, let me know, and I will send it to you via message. They should have glued it into their planners, though!

As a school district, we have to have the kids logging their at home reading. They must be reading at least 30 minutes per day at home. This can be done on raz-kids, newsELA, or other online resources, or a good, old fashioned paper book. 🙂 Whatever method they choose, they do need to log their time. This is a district mandate.

If they have a reading assignment from me, like this week they have to read a small, leveled book and answer questions about it, this definitely counts as their time. This assignment should take no more than 30 minutes to complete, so it is perfect for their reading log at one point this week. The time they spend writing their answers can count as time spent reading for their log because they are practicing comprehension.

To help with this read at home log, I will be sending more reading homework home rather than the worksheets we’ve been doing.

Some kids were concerned that they don’t have any books they want to read at their homes. I reminded them to take their library books home with them, and encouraged them to get a library card for the Dearborn library. They can even go online and order books through the library, so they don’t have to search for books when they get there.

Check out this really great article about reading benefits and ideas for big kids: https://www.choa.org/medical-services/wellness-and-preventive-care/parent-resources/all/reading-benefits-kids-teens

This week

This year is already flying by, I can’t believe it’s already the week before Thanksgiving! Here is a look at what our units are…

Reading: We will close our unit on Theme today with a quiz. Main idea will be the focus of the new unit. We talked about how just because we are ending a unit, that doesn’t mean you should stop finding the theme while you read.

Writing: We are starting our Informational Writing Unit. Last week, the kids did an informational writing just using what they remembered about informational format. This week we will be learning the correct format and organization. Some of the kids did a fabulous job, so I will be helping them to add text features to their informational writing.

Social studies: We have been talking about African empires from hundreds of years ago, and we will continue this week. We will also be adding Europe and North America to the unit and talk about how there was a triangle of trade.

Science is kind of on the back burner for a few days. We finished our physical science unit, so we are a little ahead of where we need to be.