Week of August 29-September 2nd

             First of all, I would like to extend a great big thank you to all of the parents who attended Parent Orientation last Thursday!  We had a great showing and I appreciate you sacrificing your evening to come and listen to my talk about our 5^th grade classroom.  You were a lovely audience!  Thank you also to each parent who volunteered to help out in our classroom!  This is a very supportive group and I think we are going to have a fantastic school year!

Coming up this week…

Book Fair!  This week marks our first book fair of the year!  If your child would like to make a purchase we will be shopping as a class on Friday.  However, if the kids want to shop earlier, I will be happy to send them down to library in the morning after their morning work is complete.

Upcoming Tests

Social Studies Test over Geography on Thursday, September 21

~Please encourage your child to prepare by taking the chapter 1 tutorial at www.tutorial.historyalive.com.  The kids will also need to be able to correctly label and spell all of last week’s word study words on a map.  I will be sending home another blank map this week as a study guide.  Please look over it with your child and remind him/her to use correct capitalization and spelling because this will also count as a word study grade.

Check out what we’re learning this week!

Social Studies:  On Monday and Tuesday the kids will have the opportunity to complete a transfer task where they have to show me how they can apply what they’ve learned about geography.  They will pretend to be pilots on special assignment to travel from one point to another identifying geographic landmarks along the way, latitude and longitude for starting and ending points, general climate for the areas they will be taking off and landing in, etc.  It should be pretty exciting!  Then we will spend some time reviewing and taking the test before we start our next venture into the United States regions.

Math:  On Monday we will review and I will allow kids to make corrections.  Then we will practice answering a math open response question together to get in the routine.  An open response will be included with each math test.  Then, beginning Tuesday we will jump into a fantastic unit on number theory.

Word Study:  This week we will study the capitalization rules, learn their importance, and practice implementing them in our writing.

Writing:  We will continue our study of the 6 traits of writing and the kids will practice using these traits as they collect ideas in their writer’s notebooks.

Reading:  This week will begin an in-depth study of the use of metacognition (thinking about our thinking) while reading.  We will explore each of the thinking strategies and discuss their importance in reading.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.  Thank you and have a great week!