NEWS FROM FIFTH GRADE WEEK OF SEPT. 15-19
We had an excellent first week of school! Your students are wonderful, smart people and a delight to teach. We went through the routines of a fifth grade week with flying colors, one of the smoothest first weeks I can remember. Each week we’ll build onto this good foundation with new experiences and discoveries. I will endeavor to send a newsletter every week letting you know what to expect in each subject area. This first edition will be a little long as I explain a few processes. Future newsletters will be shorter.
READING
Students are reading both novels on their own and a class novel together.
Homework: Read a minimum fifteen minutes nightly at home in addition to our fifteen minute block at school and normal classroom reading. Please assist your student in making sure this is done. Reading records (this month is a calendar to track minutes) will be due Sept. 30.
Classtime: I also listen to them read aloud from their current independent reading novel about 3-4 times per month. Your student should move through their personal choice books at a good pace for them; one student may be moving through books at one-two per week while another may be working through two-three titles per month.
We will be starting our first novel Shiloh this week. We read the novel aloud together with students taking turns. Part of expected class participation will be to read aloud and to be an active listener as well. Vocabulary and writing activities are pulled from our novel as well as more kinesthetic tasks that work with many learning styles.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Spelling: Lesson 2 came home on Friday. Usually spelling lessons come home on Monday and are due the Friday of the same week. But we are going on a field trip this Friday, so the due date for Lesson 2 is Thursday. The test will be Thursday as well. Students complete the packet and write the words for practice on a separate sheet of paper. (They should have some paper in their binder’s spelling tab for this purpose.) They staple the practice list to their lesson and turn it in. We don’t do the paragraph or the bonus on the lower half of the last page because our reading units have plenty of both in a more meaningful context. We will begin grammar next week.
SCIENCE
We are studying earth science with a start on volcanoes! We will go to Mt. St. Helens this Friday with the middle school. I appreciate all of you who have volunteered and offered to volunteer on this trip. It will be a big undertaking but worth the experience. I will send home a note with details for both middle school and fifth grade separately. Please send payment of $8.00 by Wednesday if you haven’t done so already.
US HISTORY and SOCIAL STUDIES
We will begin working on map skills this week before we begin our unit on American History. We have a wonderful, extensive project coming up in January where your student will become an expert on one of our states in the U.S.A. I have encourage them to begin thinking about which state they’d like to study. A good fit might be a state with some kind of connection to your family! (A tip: also check out their state flag-- they’ll be drawing it by hand!) We’ll make a top three choice list for each child in late November.
BIBLE
Memory verse tests begin this week. Psalm 78:4 is our first verse.
“We will not hide them from our descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.”
If your child is new to Cornerstone, they may tell the verse orally to me for the first few weeks and practice writing it; October will be an appropriate time to begin writing it for those students.
GENERAL INFORMATION
PE is Monday, Tuesday, Friday-- please help your fifth grade student remember athletic shoes and good clothes for running, jumping and playing fun games!
CHAPEL is every Wednesday. Please wear chapel clothes.
PARENT NIGHT!
September 25, 2014 at 7:00 pm
GLOW RUN
October 18, RAC in Lacey.
No comments:
Post a Comment