October 26, 2016 Newsletter

Here is what we have been learning in fifth grade:

Daily 5/CAFE: Next week students will begin the menu entitled: Toliver’s Secret.  Students will be working to compare and contrast two stories considering the author’s point of view using evidence from the text.

Writing: This week and next week we will continue writing 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 based on research.

Math:  Students will complete the coordinate grid unit on Wednesday and then begin 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. On Friday students will enjoy a Snack Math Activity in class. 

Science: Students are finishing up their Motion and Design unit. They were given a study guide last week. The study guide is due Thurs. Oct. 27th and the test will be Friday, the 28th. 

October 12, 2016 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.