The first two weeks of school have blown by! We’ve been working to have fun and ease into our academics. It has been exciting to welcome four new students into the Grade Five fam: Juliana, Maddie, Raoul and Sophia!

 

Here’s a brief snapshot of the week:

Advisory:

In advisory, students have been setting some personal and academic goals for themselves. We have also created our Grade Five House Rules which are now up in the classroom. Our focus has been in learning to organize our materials and use our planners.

History: Get out your shadufs—we’ve landed in the Fertile Crescent, and the nomads are becoming farmers. This week students created their own raps/songs inspired by changes brought about by the Agricultural Revolution. They are finding their way around Mesopotamia by practicing the map daily in anticipation of the quiz next Friday.

English: We have begun our first novel, Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. Each class, we take turns reading aloud to develop oral fluency, while pausing frequently to ask ourselves what we read.

Writer’s Workshop: We have launched into our first unit in our student of the 6 traits that comprise effective writing—the ideas trait. Students have been practicing the skills of zooming into a moment in time and stretching it out by providing details. Most students have completed their first draft of a personal narrative and next week, we will begin to peer edit these.

Math: We’ve been reviewing concepts from the fourth grade curriculum such as line and bar graphs, and line plots, as well as working with some new concepts such as in/out boxes. Students will have their first test on Monday, and have been reviewing since last Wednesday. This week, we will begin a unit on place value.

Helpful Hints:

  • PTR projects are due Oct. 5
  • Please send in the forms for Nature’s Classroom
  • Planners need to be signed even when there is no homework–please check the front pocket for notes and important papers.
  • PTR books should come back to school each day.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Cheers!

Jilly