Room B23 Weekly News
September 24-28, 2018
Announcements
It's time for BizTown!! Our visit to JA BizTown is this Tuesday (September 25th.) Please make sure your child is at school by 8:00am. 5th grade students should go through the office and straight to their classroom. We will take attendance at 8:00 and begin loading buses at 8:15am.
All students should bring a sack lunch and bottled water (no refillable water bottles or lunch boxes/bags, please...everything should be disposable.) Also, students should dress professionally, but be sure to wear comfortable shoes. They will be on their feet all day!
We will return to LCM around 3:30pm, depending on traffic. Please make sure you are signed up for my Class Dojo (a letter was sent home with your child a couple weeks ago with his/her unique sign-up code.) I will send out a message as we exit the freeway so you know when to start heading over to school to pick up your child. We usually get back right around 3:30, but we have hit traffic in the past that has caused us to arrive closer to 4:00. Please note that our return time is AFTER regular dismissal, so students who usually ride a bus to after-school care will need alternate pick-up arrangements that day.
Academic Updates
Math
We will be working on expressions (including expressions with variables) this week. Students will need to be able to evaluate expressions such as "15 less than the product of 9 and 5" by writing that expression with numbers and operation symbols: 9 x 5 - 15. We will also explore how letters can represent unknown numbers (variables), such as: "7 times the sum of 5 and a number y" which would be written as 7 x (5 + y).
We will also be moving into multi-digit multiplication by reviewing multiplication strategies students used in 3rd and 4th grade. Next week, students will be learning the traditional algorithm for multiplication.
Language Arts
We are in week 2 of our second ELA unit. This unit has a fiction focus and we are reading and discussing texts that relate to our essential questions: "Why do we value certain qualities in people?" We have been reading excerpts from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as well as some Tall Tales, Myths, Folklore, and fictional short stories. In writing, students have been learning about the qualities of a good narrative, and have practiced a fun writing strategy I call "Put Said to Bed," where they use words other than "said" when writing dialogue in order to describe the thoughts, feelings, actions, or tone of voice of a character.
This week, we will be exploring various dialects and registers, as well as how to use "showing" sentences to make our writing more descriptive.
Social Studies
We are completing our BizTown curriculum this week.
Students should continue to study their States & Capitals. Our next test will be on Friday, October 5th. Your child should know which region he/she is working on. Many students have already passed the Southern and Eastern border regions and will be working on the Northern border next. If your child has not yet passed the Southern or Eastern border tests, please encourage them to put in 5-10 minutes per day studying those two regions so they can be successful passing the test next week. As a reminder, whenever your child feels confident that he/she knows All 50 states and capitals (and their locations), they may take the All 50 test, which satisfies the Grade 5 standard. They may have up to 3 tries to pass All 50.
Science
Specials
Monday: PE
Tuesday: JA BizTown field trip
Wednesday: Art (I switched with another teacher since we missed it on Tuesday)
Thursday: PE
Friday: BMX Assembly (we are missing library this week due to the assembly unless I can schedule a make-up time)