Parent News 9/29

NEWS FROM FIFTH GRADE                                                 WEEK OF SEPT. 28-OCT. 2

Thanks for coming to parent night last week!  I appreciate your willingness to listen to what our goals are for the year and how we “do” 5th grade!  It means a great deal to teachers to have parents informed and to be able to touch base with you all regularly.  BLUE FOLDERS have finished/graded work and important things. We use these heavy duty blue folders to communicate notes home along with finished work to stay with you. Planners  were updated today with upcoming events.

READING

Students are reading a novel of their own choosing and our class novel, Shiloh.

We are also doing some weekly vocabulary games called word ladders alongside a quick reading comprehension practice to keep those skills sharp.  Ask your student what they are reading- see how many titles they have read so far this year.

Homework:  Read a minimum of fifteen minutes nightly (400 plus for month) at home starting in October. Please assist your student in making sure this is done. Reading records (this month is a calendar to track minutes) are due Sept. 30-TOMORROW!  Please remind students to total their minutes and then a parent should sign their calendars verifying their effort. New calendars come home tomorrow.

Classtime:  Shiloh pen projects came home today. This is a fun project with found objects.  Students need to create their pen within some type of box, but not use the box as their pen.  This is due next week on Tuesday and should provide some weekend entertainment and creativity for your student.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Spelling: Lesson 3 came home last Friday. Students should complete the packet and write the words for practice on a separate sheet of paper, stapled to the packet.  TEST is Friday morning and lesson is due upon arrival in class.  

We are still learning to navigate IXL and logging onto computers, etc.   Please see the email I will send today for your student’s personal email/username and password. A computer use policy agreement came home today for signature  by both student and parent.  Please sign and return by tomorrow if possible.

SCIENCE

We examined common objects to determine their engineering history and use.   Tomorrow we will have some fun with air and flight.  

US HISTORY and SOCIAL STUDIES

Map skills review is still taking place.  We will begin the states and capitals memorization in November, along with US History.

BIBLE

Matthew 7:24-25 Test Wednesday.   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, and Friday-- please help your fifth grade student remember athletic shoes and good clothes for running, jumping and playing fun games!

MUSIC is Wednesday and Thursday.  Strings class is T/TH.

CHAPEL is every Wednesday.  Please wear chapel clothes and bring your worship voices!

GLOW RUN  THIS WEEKEND! RAC in Lacey.

SPIRIT WEEK October 12-15

NO SCHOOL October 16 Teacher Inservice

Field Trip October 23- Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site.  ** This is an early departure event.  We will leave school promptly at 8:15. Plan to arrive by 8:00.  Cost should be about $5.  We need three drivers.  

Week 2 September 21-25

NEWS FROM FIFTH GRADE                                                     WEEK OF SEPT. 21-25

PLEASE JOIN US FOR CURRICULUM NIGHT!  THURSDAY AT 7:00

I can’t stress enough that this is worth your time in terms of information and helpful hints for your student.

We had beautiful weather, great participation, and excellent student attitudes over the first full week of school.  We are transitioning nicely to a  fifth grade mindset and learning the ropes, especially our new classmates.

READING

Students are reading a novel of their own choosing and we will begin our class novel study book, Shiloh.

Homework:  Read a minimum of 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 2 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.

SHILOH is an excellent book about hard choices, right and wrong, and puppy love (the kind where a kid gets deeply attached to a pet!)  Students will have an assignment come home this weekend to build a shelter for a pet using found materials.  They can bring them to school later this week- it’s due next Friday October 2.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Spelling: Lesson 2 came home yesterday. Students should complete the packet and write the words for practice on a separate sheet of paper, stapled to the packet.  TEST is Friday morning and lesson is due upon arrival in class.

In grammar, we are practicing in iXL before we get our own full time classroom online. Students are still learning a great deal about passwords, typing and following instructions to be successful.  We are also creating a document and accompanying visual organizer about a few of our favorite things.

SCIENCE

We are studying the engineering process and solving some problems with aeronautics.  This is an 8-10 week unit and I’m excited for this new curriculum. Our first two lessons involve engineering a tower that’s ten inches tall and can bear weight using only index cards and tape, then studying common objects which have been engineered to solve a problem.

US HISTORY and SOCIAL STUDIES

Map skills review is taking place over the next two-three weeks.  

BIBLE
2 Corinthians 5:17  Test Wednesday

We are learning routines to journal in our Bible, memorize scripture, and pray for one another.   We’re also learning about wisdom this week and the nature of truth.

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 and bring your worship voice ready to sing.

GLOW RUN

October 2, RAC in Lacey.

Fifth Grade News and Happenings

NEWS FROM FIFTH GRADE                                                     WEEK OF SEPT. 14-18

We had an excellent first partial 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.

READING

Students are reading novels on their own and we will soon begin a class novel together.  Graphic novels are a fun literature piece, but students must complete their 300 minutes of home reading on regular novels first.

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. Their choice of genre is acceptable as long as it is age-appropriate reading level. (4.5 or higher)

Classtime:  I also listen to them read aloud from their current independent reading novel about 3 times per month. (This week I am listening to a selection I chose which is fifth grade level to create a baseline.) 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 next 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 1 came home today. It is due on Friday and we spent a good deal of class time exploring how to do it easily and be prepared for the test on Friday. Students complete the packet and write the words for practice on a separate sheet of paper. (They should have some paper in their homework folder 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 are also working on finishing a short form poem about ourselves and a list of 25 things that we are going to turn into an illustrated and elaborated text art piece.  I will be introducing students to our grammar program this week.  More information on that will come home as we are gearing it up for the first year.  It’s called IXL and I am very excited about moving grammar to a faster feedback and more interactive format.

SCIENCE

We talked today about the scientific method.  We condense it down to its bare bones and worked through  both a real and an imaginary experiment.  Good thinking abounded! We'll discuss a couple of famous experiments in class tomorrow.

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

We talked about how to pray as a class today and the various ways we approach prayer time. We also took a peek at a devotional book and our Bible curriculum which we will begin Thursday. Memory verse begins next week.  Students will either write the verse out for a grade or be chosen to say it in chapel (which is also a grade, same points for being brave and saying it up front.) If your child is chosen to say it in chapel, I will communicate to them and you the evening before in order to give them practice time.  If it is too stressful, they may gracefully bow out until later but will need to write it instead. We will write our first verse out on Thursday and practice saying it together daily.

***If your child is new to Cornerstone, they may recite 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!

PIZZA MONEY IS DUE WED. AT 8:30 AM  

MUSIC is Wednesday and Thursday.

POOL PARTY is this Friday at 3:15 until 4:15.  Permission slips must be returned signed to attend (please read for details about parent chaperoning child.)

CHAPEL is every Wednesday.  Please wear chapel clothes.

CURRICULUM NIGHT!

September 24, 2015 at 7:00 pm

GLOW RUN

October 3, RAC in Lacey.