5th Grade
Keefe, Kingsley & Ward
Upcoming Events
March 8th: D.A.R.E. Rough Draft of Essay Due
March 8th: Author Visit
March 16 & 17th: Spring Conferences
March 21st: Human Growth and Development Permission Slips due
March 23rd: D.A.R.E. Graduation
Spring Conferences
Spring Conferences will be taking place March 16th & 17th to align with PLE's schedule. These conferences are OPTIONAL. IF you would like a conference, please choose a time using Family Access (the same way you signed up for Fall Conferences). If you have trouble with this process, please send your homeroom teacher an e-mail.
Also, remember that these conferences are optional and that information on 6th grade or math placement for next year will not be available for these conferences, as we need data from later in the year to make this determination.
Can you Help at the upcoming book fair?
Next week Student Council is hosting a book drive March 7-11 asking students to bring in a gently used Horizon appropriate book to donate to the Book Fair to be used as prizes. Any book donated and not given away as a prize will be given back to the teachers for their classroom libraries. Thank you for checking your book shelves and donating! Parent volunteers will get a $6 voucher to be used in the book fair just for volunteering.
If you are interested, use this link to sign up!
March Madness DreamBox Challege
Our March Madness DreamBox Challenge began February 29th, 2016. Each week students will be competing to make it to the next round of the competition. Students will be “judged” on the amount of minutes completed on DreamBox. If a tie should occur, the number of unique lessons will be used as the tie breaker. If a tie is still in place, student growth will be utilized to determine who moves on to the next round. Since tie breakers are in place, it would be strategic to make sure that the majority of time is spent on lessons.
Each round begins on Monday and ends Sunday evening. Any time spent on DreamBox on Sunday will be included. Times are checked Monday morning to ensure that students will know if they have moved on to the next round.
Students that are eliminated will still have a chance to compete. Each week the student with the most amount of minutes, most growth, and most unique lessons complete will get a star to show off their accomplishments for all to see!
This is meant to be a fun competition in honor of the NCAA March Madness. We know we have some eager students so if you feel your student is on DreamBox too much, please feel free to limit the amount of time they can go on daily.
Dreambox is a great way to personalize your student’s math from enrichment through intervention. It develops skills and closes gaps while adapting to the individual learner.
March Madness DreamBox Challenge Calendar
Round 1: February 29th- March 6th
Round 2: March 7th- March 13th
Round 3: March 14th- March 20th
Round 4: March 21st- March 23rd
**The winner will be announced on March 24th**
Community Author Visits
Monday, March 7, 6:30 pm, at Oak Creek Public Library:
Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee, authors of Maybe a Fox. Worlds collide in a spectacular way when Newberry and National Book Award finalist Appelt and Pulitzer Prize nominee McGhee team up! Maybe a Fox is a fantastical, heartbreaking, and gorgeous tale about two sisters, a fox cub, and what happens when one of the sisters disappears. The new Oak Creek Public Library is located at 8040 S. Sixth St., just off Drexel.
Wednesday, March 9, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Brittany Cavallaro, author of A Study in Charlotte. Cavallaro has written a contemporary take on the Sherlock Holmes story, with the main characters being descendants of Holmes and Watson. Kirkus writes: “Cavallaro’s crackling dialogue, well-drawn characters, and complicated relationships make this feel like a seamless and sharp renewal of Doyle’s series.” Please note this is probably for 8th grade and up. Also, we’re also not yet booked up for schools visits, so let us know if you have an interested high-school audience. Note that Cavallaro is all-but-dissertation in the UWM PhD program in creative writing and has already published a book of poetry from the University of Akron. What a great person for your budding writers to meet!
Thursday, March 10, 6:30 pm, at Greenfield Public Library:
Lauren Tarshis, author of I Survived the Hindenburg Disaster 1937. Lauren tells stories of young people and their resilience and strength in the midst of unimaginable disasters, from Hurricane Katrina to the Titanic to September 11. Her newest focuses on the massive German airship that caught fire while trying to land in New Jersey -- and killed 35 people. This is her first national tour! Greenfield Public Library is located at 5310 W Layton Ave.
Friday, March 11, 6:30 pm, at Centennial Hall.
Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief Tenth Anniversary Edition, at Centennial Hall. Can you believe it’s been ten years since this groundbreaking novel for young adults was published? One of the most enduring stories of our time, The Book Thief is just a small story really, about, among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. The 10th-anniversary edition hardcover features pages of bonus content, including marked-up manuscript pages, original sketches, and pages from the author’s writing notebook. Milwaukee Public Library’s Centennial Hall is located at 733 N Eighth St.
Sunday, March 13, 3 pm, at Boswell:
Miranda Paul, author of Whose Hands are These? A Community Helper Guessing Book. This newest picture book from the author of Water is Water and One Plastic Bag explores hand movement and how it relates to the careers of the people the hands belong to—great for kids 4 and up. This event is not just a signing—it’s also a family-friendly storytime with activities, treats, and prizes!
Tuesday, March 22, 7 pm, at St Monica Parish:
Raymond Arroyo, author of Will Wilder: The Relic of Perilous Falls. The lead anchor and managing editor of EWTN and biographer of Mother Angelica offers his first book for middle grade readers, an adventures series in the spirit of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and Peter Lerangis’s Seven Wonders. St Monica Parish is located at 160 W Silver Spring Dr in Whitefish Bay.
Reading
Block 1: Monday, March 21st
Block 2: Friday, March 18th
Block 2: Tuesday, March 22nd
We have been working on mini lessons, webs, conferring and peer conferencing while focusing on the following paragraph and text structures writing that will be in our project:
- chronological
- compare and contrast
- cause and effect
- problem and solution
- a wonderful introduction to hook our readers!
Each project will all include many of our text features that we have been creating and discovering.
Math
Please make sure you take a look at your child's math take home folder this weekend. In there you will find Unit 5 Quiz 2. Also, please sign the sheet and return it with your child on Monday. All of the papers can be left at home.
Next week we will be be taking the Unit 5 assessment on Wednesday, March 9th. However, please check the homework page for any changes.
Take a look at our "Breakout" session for last week. Each block showed excellent perseverance breaking the codes!
Writing
Science (Kingsley and Keefe Homerooms)
Next week we will explore the volume of solids and how to calculate the volume of irregular shapes using the process of displacement.