What’s Coming Up- Week of September 10

 

Miscellaneous:
Wow, it has been an enjoyable beginning of school for our 5th graders! It was fantastic having our classmates get acquainted by each of them sharing their special talents. It was so cool seeing the variety of talents within our classroom!  What a talented group of kids! 🙂 Throughout the next few weeks we will continue to do some class bonding activities. Near the end of next week we will be participating in a online bullying awareness survey. We have a no tolerance bullying policy! Please stay updated on school happenings by checking our blogs daily.

Math:
The first unit we will be working on in math this year is Basic Fact Fluency.  The students will practice multiplication and division facts in order to continue developing these concepts and help students learn/master their facts.  We will be using a variety of strategies that will allow all students to be successful.  These strategies include games, timed tests, partner work and much more.  Please practice with your son/daughter the next few weeks to give your child an extra boost with their fluency and confidence.  Thanks so much!

Writing:
The first unit we will be doing in writing this year will be Memoirs.  We’ll be expecting the students to rise to new heights this year, to reach for horizons that are far more ambitious than they have ever known.  This year will be for work that is more grown-up, more important, than anything they’ve done before.  We will be building off our Personal Narratives and taking it to that next level.  Memoirs will require more reflection, synthesis, and critical thinking usually in a retrospective fashion (a now and then).  Memoir is the writer’s effort to say something big and important about himself or herself.  It is also their chance to “read” or reflect on the stories of one’s own life and develop interpretations, or life lessons, about one’s own life.  We have years of stories, now is the opportunity to lay these stories out and reflect on their meaning.
Therefore, this week we will collect snippets of as many memories as we can and write.  Some will be stuck for ideas, so we will rely on what we know: first times, last times, important people, place, and things. Here’s to a great week of writing 🙂

Reading:
Our school year begins by reviewing test taking strategies, and building stamina for reading.  Using short story fiction and nonfiction texts the 5th graders will revisit the sequence of good test taking strategies for multiple choice style tests. We will model how to think through a text when reading by leaving thinking tracks, how to highlight important information, and practice how to eliminate silly answer choices.  By the end of the week the focus will shift from answering multiple choice questions to answering questions with a written response. We will distinguish answering questions in writing that use the verbs: describe, tell, list, explain, and interpret.  Each day we will reserve time for the students to have independent reading time.  During this independent reading time, we will be conferencing with the kids to get to know their strengths and interests in reading.  Beginning next week we will begin our daily reading homework and have kids keep track of their daily minutes in a reading log.  Make sure to check with your child’s teacher’s blog to see how they will be managing this weekly homework.  Happy reading!

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