Room 26 Weekly News
September 19, 2016
Announcements
Thank you so much to the families who donated books to the classroom library last week during the Book Fair!! I really appreciate your donations, and I know the students will love reading the new books!
It is time for school pictures! 5th Graders will have school pictures taken on Thursday morning, September 22.
Academic Updates
Language Arts
We are in Week 3 of our first ELA Unit (theme is Government and Citizenship). Our main focuses are identifying main ideas and key details in the text we read, making inferences and drawing conclusions when we read, and learning how to use text evidence in our writing. At the end of each 3-week unit, students will take a Word Analysis test (spelling, vocabulary) as well as a Reading Comprehension test. The Word Analysis tests will be written, and the Reading tests will be conducted online.
Math
Our focus this week will be on Place Value up through the billions and down through the thousandths (decimals). We will explore how the value of a number increases or decreases as it moves left or right on the place value chart (10 times bigger as it moves to the left, 10 times smaller as it moves to the right), as well as how to multiply and divide by Powers of 10. I am so proud of so many of my students for knowing their multiplication facts fluently and from memory. If your child has passed the multiplication test, please have them practice division facts so they can be equally fluent in those. If your child has not yet passed the multiplication test, you should be seeing daily math homework on the facts he/she is struggling with. Typically the facts students have the most trouble with are x6, x7, x8, and x12, so they really only need lots of practice with those facts since they are solid on the other facts. I highly suggest using Math Magician (you can access it from my website) or flashcards to practice those facts.
Writing
Students began their first informative essays last week and will be finishing them this week. Their first essay is on the human brain and how we learn. I typically keep all writing samples at school on the writing wall and send them home at the end of the year in a book (you will get a rubric page with your child's grade for a particular essay), but if you'd like to come in and read your child's essay, please feel free to email me and we can set up a day before school.
Social Studies
We are continuing our unit on the events that led up to the American Revolution. Our essential question for our first ELA unit is "Why do laws continue to change and evolve?" so we have been learning about important events of colonial America through that lens. So far, we have covered the French-Indian War, the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act, the Boston Tea Party, and the Boston Massacre.
Science
Science will be on hold for a couple of weeks while we focus on Social Studies.
Specials
Art - Monday
PE - Tuesday/Thursday
Library - Thursday
Music - Friday
**School Picture day is on Thursday, September 22**