Barry 5th Grade Team Silver
Friday, December 7th, 2018
Important Dates
December 5-12 - Student Council Gingerbread House Contest
December 10-14 - Holiday Spirit Week (see flyer below)
December 12-14 - Candy Cane Grams
December 15 - Mercury Gymnastics Holiday Party @ 7:00pm (see flyer below)
December 18 - Ticket Tuesday
December 19 - Winter Parties and Incentive Celebrations
December 19 - End of 2nd Quarter
December 20 - January 2 - Winter Break
Things to Remember
- Please check your child's planner each night for updates on what we are working on in class, upcoming events/reminders, and behavior tracking. Your child can help you find this information, and provide more details
- Read 20 minutes a night, 5 nights a week
- Practice on Reflex Math 15 minutes a night, 3 times a week
Winter Party
If you are able, please use the Sign-Up Genius link below to volunteer to send snacks and supplies with your child.
Parents are welcome to attend the festivities! If you would like to join us on Wednesday, please email either Ms. Shoup or Mrs. Hayes.
Secret Snowflake
A permission slip will be coming home today and Monday. Please return these by Tuesday, December 11th if your child would like to participate. You can also email permission. On Tuesday, the kids will draw a name of a classmate along with their likes. They really enjoy trying to be sneaky and giving to their friends.
Each day will be a different theme:
- December 13 - favorite drink
- December 14 - favorite candy
- December 17 - favorite snack
- December 18 - something of their favorite color
- December 19 - reveal gift
Reading
In reading, we have begun our unit on Comparing and Contrasting characters, setting, and plot elements from a story this past week. We started our unit by reviewing how a character’s actions throughout a story can help us to make an inference about the character’s personality. We also reviewed character traits or words used to describe a character’s personality within a story. By the end of the week, we used our skills with recognizing character traits with characters in two different stories in order to compare and contrast the characters’ personalities. We learned that graphic organizers such as a Venn Diagram and Double Bubble Chart can be used to help map comparing and contrasting ideas from stories. We will finish this week discussing how to use language with comparing and contrasting in order to create a compare/contrast paragraph that shows similarities and differences between the characters’ personalities in the 2 stories that we read this week. Next week we will focus on comparing and contrasting the settings and plots between two stories as well as how the characters between the two stories might change over time in similar and different ways. This will be our last unit of study before Winter Break.
Second quarter Accelerated Reader goals can be found on a post-it note in your child’s planner. Students on Team Silver will need to continue to work on reading at home and at school toward their 2nd quarter AR goals.
The students on Team Silver will have until the end of the day on Wednesday, December 19, the last day of second quarter, to take quizzes on the books they have completed to have points toward their AR goals.
I am encouraging the children to read at a good pace and to read carefully to help them have success on their AR quizzes. The children must pass their quizzes in order to receive points toward their goals on the books they read. The point value awarded for the book also goes down with each question missed on the quiz. Students on Team Silver are given time in class to read during Reader’s Workshop but are also encouraged to read at home to help them work toward their AR goals. Students in 5th grade will receive a “W” for work in their planners for AR goals not met by the end of the quarter.
In order to help encourage students to meet their AR goals and reading goals, I am asking students on Team Silver to read for at least 20 minutes a night at home for homework to help them make progress in their books. I am asking students to read for 20 minutes at home at least 5 nights a week. This is the main homework the students will be focusing on for ELA during the year other than working on writing projects or other projects that might need more time to finish.
Writing
In writing, we have begun our third person narrative, “Into the Snow Globe” in class this past week. In this story, the main character finds themselves transported into a snow globe world and has to work toward finding their way out and back to reality.
We began our unit by examining other stories that have a Wintery tone and made noticings of the language that is used to describe winter and winter settings. The kids have really enjoyed creating these stories this week. This will be the last Third Person Narrative story that we will be doing for the quarter. Our next unit of study after the break will be working to create a research-based argument essay.
Math
- Use patterns and mental math to divide
- Estimate quotients with 2-digit divisors
- Use models to divide
- Use partial quotients to divide
- Divide by multiples of 10
- Divide by 2-digit divisors
We will be testing on Topic 5 on Tuesday, December 18th*
Students should be practicing on Reflex Math 3 times a week for 15 minutes.
If your child has reached fluency on Reflex, or if he/she would like extra practice, he/she may go on Prodigy. Students have this log-in information in their planners. You can get to both websites by clicking on the links below.
*Date subject to change
Science
Social Studies
We wrapped up our unit on Economics with our field trip to the Blue Springs School of Economics. The kids had such a fantastic time working in their shops, going on break and purchasing items at each of the shops from their classmates, and working with the other students in their shops to try to sell enough items to make a profit and pay back the bank loan on their shops. We will finish out the unit with a test over Economics with our Economics test this Friday, December 7.
I wanted to say a big thank you also to all of our amazing parent volunteers who volunteered to help with the field trip to Blue Springs Economics this year! The kids had such a fantastic time and we couldn’t have done it without all your help. Thanks again for helping to make this such a terrific experience for the kids and one they will remember for many years to come!
We began our next unit of study this week on Early Native Americans. We learned that early Native Americans were mostly nomadic and followed their food instead of settling in certain areas, but we also learned that this changed when tribes began to learn how to farm food. Farming led to the tribes being able to stay in one location or area. Next week, we will begin to look at tribes that settled in each region in the United States and how tribes used the resources from the land around them to help meet the needs of the community and to help the community be successful. We will begin to focus on early American colonies and the events that led up to the Revolutionary War after the Winter Break.
Contact Us
Ms. Shoup
Math and Science
(816) 436-9623 EXT. 3152
Mrs. Hayes
ELA and Social Studies
(816) 436-9623 EXT. 3145