Fifth Grade Newsletter
April 2019
Reading Endorsement Summer Courses
Registration opens in myPGS on May 1, 2019.
Pasco County Schools offers five reading endorsement courses throughout the school year and summer to provide our teachers an opportunity to add the endorsement to their teaching certificate. Click on this link for a list of all courses being offered this summer, their myPGS course number, and details about the dates that the courses run for the summer session. Please email readingendorsement@pasco.k12.fl.us if you have any questions.
Standards Feedback: Make Your Voices Heard!
This is your opportunity to be sure your voice is heard. The state is now asking for additional feedback about our state standards that is more in depth than the original feedback survey. We hope leaders, teachers, and parents have the opportunity to share their thoughts about our state standards.
Click here to create an account and provide your input: https://www.floridastandardsreview.org
Click here of the information on the standards review process:http://fldoe.org/standardsreview
ELA
Throughout Unit 4, learners will understand the impact (positive and negative) that explorers and settlers have on people’s views and understanding of the world.
Learners will engage in opinion writing for both module tasks. Module A Task: Students will gather relevant information from the anchor and supporting texts to respond to the following prompt: What was your opinion of Henry Hudson (or another explorer) at the beginning of the text? How did your opinion change by the end? Use the FSA Opinion Rubric to score the writing tasks.
Scaffolded Strategies Handbook (SSH)
- Unlock the text (anchor and supporting) by providing scaffolded instruction aligned to the qualitative features.
- Unlock the writing so they can become proficient in writing opinion, informative/explanatory, and narrative pieces. There are also lessons to help students understand the task, how to prepare to write, write, and revise their draft using a task specific checklist.
- Routines and activities to teach phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, grammar, or ways to engage learners in discussions.
Did you know that you have digital access to the 2016 SSH through Pearson Realize? You will find that they have added an Unlock Language Learning section, which is filled with strategies to build background knowledge, provides sample sentence frames for writing and speaking, expands vocabulary and provides sample writing task exemplars.
Formative Assessments
- Selection Tests
- Question Stems
- Formative Assessment Cards
- Formative Assessment Strategies
- Independent Writing-Formative Assessment call outs
Remember, one of the best ways to truly assess what students know is through writing or speaking.
Additional Resources
The additional articles and videos can be paired with the anchor text, text collection titles, poetry or leveled readers in order to make cross curricular connections.
Here are several additional texts:
- An English Map of the Americas, 1670
- Explorers: Triumphs and Troubles
- The Explorers: William Clark
- The Explorers: Meriwether Lewis
- The Explorers: Henry Hudson
Math
During the month of April, Grade 5 students will wrap up work in Module 5 on addition and multiplication with volume and area. Throughout these final lessons, students draw two-dimensional shapes to analyze their attributes and then use those attributes to classify them. Grade 4’s work with the protractor is applied to construct various quadrilaterals. Using measurement tools illuminates the attributes used to define and recognize each quadrilateral. Students then analyze defining attributes and create a hierarchical classification of quadrilaterals. To learn more about this topic, click here to access the Module 5 Study.
The Module 6 Study on Problem Solving with the Coordinate Plane, is scheduled to be released on 4/1/19. It is recommended Module 6 begin on 4/15/19. This module study will be posted to the module page of the Elementary Learning Network under the blue bar titled, Virtual Learning Opportunities. In Module 6, students are introduced to the concept of a coordinate as describing the distance of a point on the line from zero. Students explore ways to describe the position of points not located on the lines. This discussion leads to the discovery that a second number line, perpendicular to the first, creates an efficient, precise way to describe the location of these points. Thus, points can be located using coordinate pairs, (a, b). Students describe given points using coordinate pairs and, conversely, use given coordinate pairs to plot points. Students then investigate patterns relating the x - and y -coordinates of the points on the line and reason about the patterns in the ordered pairs, laying important groundwork for Grade 6 proportional reasoning.
New to Eureka Math? Be sure to join us for our Introduction to Eureka Math session on 4/17/19 from 4:30-6:30 PM. This training will be held at the District Office in Building 2 Mangrove Room. Registration for this session can be found through My PGS under Course #2119 Section #13243.
Science
We will be hosting two evening opportunities for 5th grade teams to experience the Science Olympiad stations in person. The stations will be set up in Training room C from 5pm-7pm on April 10th and 11th. School teams who attend will have the chance to use their school's data to identify the review stations most needed by their students and visit those stations to preview and plan. There will be a stipend for those attending. Sign up for the evening sessions HERE. The Science Olympiad materials are available on SharePoint and via the Rainbow map in MyLearning.
STEM Fair entries are due to Maria Emerick in OLL by April 6th. Be sure to check the Science Resource page for additional information on the STEM Fair. We hope to see you on April 27th at RRMS/HS to cheer our young Scientists on as they share their learning. If you are interested in judging at the STEM Fair from 8am-11:30am, please email Maria Emerick at memerick@pasco.k12.fl.us.
Social Studies- Celebrate Financial Literacy
April is National Financial Literacy Month which is a great opportunity to highlight the importance of financial literacy and teach our students how to establish and maintain healthy financial habits. To celebrate the month and encourage our students to be financially smart citizens in our communities, Pasco County Schools has several events planned and resources to encourage Financial Literacy Fridays.
Pasco County Schools, in partnership with our valued community partners, is excited to host two Financial Literacy Expo events from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 1st at Marchman Technical College and April 4th at Wesley Chapel High School. These events are designed to help parents/guardians, employees, community members and students with financial planning matters and getting more information for starting a financially successful future. There will be an expo-style event in the dining room/cafeteria showcasing our valued financial experts. There will also be brief informational sessions that we encourage you to attend.
Teachers who attend sessions will be able to earn professional development points and can register through Course # 2559/ Section # 14136 for April 1, 2019 and Section # 14137 for April 4, 2019 within myPGS. Also, we are asking that you encourage your students and their families to attend these wonderful events. We will have a fun and fabulous prize for the school who has the most students who attend.
Please go to the Financial Literacy web page, where you will find:
- a flyer to advertising (printed flyers were delivered to schools for advertisement, as well);
- an FAQ document so that everyone is able to answer parent questions about the events and how to register;
- and, links to register for either the Marchman or Wesley Chapel expo.
To help celebrate the month with lessons, tasks, texts and ideas to spark discussion, please visit:
https://floridafinancialliteracy.weebly.com/
and https://pasco.instructure.com/courses/191744/pages/financial-literacy-month.