October 21, 2015 Newsletter

This is what we have been learning in fifth grade:

Reading:This week students will complete the menu entitled: Toliver’s Secret.  Students have been working to identify text structure of non-fiction literature and compare and contrast two stories considering the author’s point of view using evidence from the text.

Writing: This week we will begin to write an opinion piece on a topic supporting a point of view with reasons and information. Students will strive to provide logically ordered reasons that are supported by facts and details.

Math:  Students have started the coordinate grid unit and will be finishing it up shortly. We will then be moving into multiplying and dividing decimals. They will be multiplying and dividing decimals to hundredths, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction. They also will be relating the strategy to a written method and explaining the reason it was used. 

Science: We are finishing up our Force and Motion unit. The students are going to be given a study guide this Wednesday and it will need to be completed by next Tues. the 27th. Some of the concepts they should know are understanding the relationship between force and motion, explaining how factors such as gravity, friction, and change in mass affect the motion of objects. Lastly, inferring the motion of objects in terms of how far they travel in a certain amount of time and the direction in which they travel.  

October 7, 2015 Newsletter

Here is what we have been learning so far in fifth grade:

Daily 5/CAFE: This week students will complete their Daily 5 Menu entitled: “And then What Happened, Paul Revere?:”  a biography.  We will be concentrating on nonfiction this quarter. Students will spend time learning to compare and contrast the text structure of events, ideas, concepts, or information in two or more texts.  Examples of text structure we will cover include: chronology, comparison, cause/effect, and problem/solution.

Writing: In Quarter 2, students will write an opinion piece on a topic supporting a point of view with reasons and information. They will strive to provide logically ordered reasons that are supported by facts and details.

Math:  Students are finishing up their geometry unit, where they have been working on understanding that attributes belonging to a category of two dimensional figures also belong to all subcategories of that category. For example, all rectangles have four right angles and squares are rectangles, so all squares have four right angles. They have also been learning to classify two-dimensional figures in a hierarchy based on properties. Next, we will be moving into using and understanding coordinate grids. They will be representing real world and mathematical problems by graphing points in the first quadrant of the coordinate plane, and interpret coordinate values of points in the context of the situation.

Science: We have started our Motion and Design unit. The students are beginning to understand the concepts of force and motion and the relationship between them. They are also inferring the motion of objects in terms of how far they travel in a certain amount of time and the direction in which they travel.