Week of August 15-19

 

**For some reason, I am unable to post pictures at this time. I will post them as soon as I am able. Thank you for understanding.

 

Week in Review

Good afternoon, parents! We have had a fabulous week! This class already feels like a community of learners! They are so sweet and fun and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know your kiddos this week! To share with you a couple of our achievements this week, we have created a Classroom Constitution where the students synergized to create a class mission statement as well as a list of important rights and responsibilities. We will all review and sign this document next week, and then it will be displayed in our classroom for the remainder of the year. We also learned about each other’s personalities and preferences for working in groups. Yesterday the kids worked to create word math where they would add two or more words together and use the sum of those letters to say something about the relationship between those words. It was really cool to see some of the ideas they came up with! Today the kids took on the challenge of silently working together to create the tallest free-standing structure possible using 33 straws and about 18” of masking tape. It’s been a very fun week!

 

 

Homework
This weekend your child has the assignment of creating a culture box. If a box is not available at home he/she may use a bag instead. The culture box assignment can be found in your child’s take-home folder. The idea is to bring it a minimum of 5 items meeting at least 5 of the culture descriptors below. This way each student can share some information about his/her own culture with the class. Photographs are fine to include as well as items that don’t meet the descriptors listed. We brainstormed a list of even more descriptors in class.

Culture Descriptors

language

home/shelter

literature

customs

traditions

food

music

art

religion

clothing

transportation

entertainment

Please encourage your child to bring in his/her culture box on Monday. No written information is necessary. They just need to bring in their chosen items and be prepared to share. Thank you for your help in this matter.

Homework and Agenda

Regarding homework, it is very important that your child complete his/her homework each night. Every night (aside from this weekend) your child will be asked to read for 20 minutes, record the book title, and get a parent signature in the agenda. I will also assign other homework on an as-needed basis. I try to only assign valuable homework that reviews the skills learned in class.

Handbook Forms

If you have not already returned the 3 forms at the back of your child’s handbook, please do so on Monday. Be sure to mark only one answer on the Student Image form.

Thank You!!

So many of you were so kind and purchased items either from our classroom wish list or simply important teacher materials that I know I will use throughout the school year! Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and generosity!

Here’s what we’ll be learning next week!

Reading: What are the expectations for reading workshop? We will spend next week establishing our routines and procedures for reading workshop as well as building our independent reading stamina.

Writing: What are the expectations for writing workshop? What are the 6 traits of effective writing? We will again establish routines and procedures for writing time, and we will also begin learning about the 6 traits of writing and practicing those skills throughout the week.

Math: During math next week, each child will have the opportunity to meet the other 5^th grade teachers. Because we will be flexibly grouping the students this year, we decided it would be best to rotate our homeroom classes so they would have an opportunity to complete a STEM project with each teacher. These will be fun, hands-on activities that integrate math, science and engineering!

Social Studies: What are the big ideas of social studies? Each day I will introduce a new “big idea” in social studies to help students understand the 5 major topics (economics, culture, geography, history, and government.