Dear families,

Wow! What a week we had last week! I am just so impressed with our CAA family. First, let's talk Bake Sale! Thanks to everyone who sent in treats. We made $664.45 in just one day! We even sold out before we could get to everyone in the building. Awesome! (I'll talk more about field trips below.)

I am also INCREDIBLY grateful for the outpouring of love and support from our CAA family for donations to Fairington Elementary School. I went down Friday morning to DeKalb County to visit Fairington. They have done a wonderful job repairing the classrooms damaged by fire, smoke, and flood. I met Mrs. Viera-Allen, whose kindergarten classroom was truly destroyed by the fire. The rooms adjacent to hers were damaged too, but not to the same extent. She lost so many personal items and everything she has collected over the years. The destruction truly was devastating. I met children from her classroom and from other classes who will benefit from the supplies. The principal, school board members, teachers, and students were so grateful. Many were moved to tears by all the donors who showed up bringing box after box of supplies. 

I am so proud of your children. They wrote a great letter, organized the supply drive, and boxed up everything to perfection! I am blessed to be a part of their fifth grade year. I hope they have loved serving others this year and that they continue to want to do so. Below are some pictures.

Thank you again for your generosity and love! 

Field Trips
First of all, we have a field trip coming up on Friday, February 20. We are going to the Atlanta History Museum for an interactive Civil War tour called "The Price of Freedom." The entire 5th grade is going, but we are splitting into two groups on two different days because the museum can't take all 150 students on one day. My class, along with Ms. Creel's and Ms. Weiser's classes, are going on Friday. The other 3 classes (Hawkins, Dodd, Butler) are going on Thursday. This trip is free for students! We will be sending home permission slips prior to the trip.

Of course, many people are curious about our big end-of-year trip to Atlanta. Please read this section very carefully. Our PTA has graciously taken over the planning of this event. We are still working out the finer details, and we will let you know those as soon as they are settled. There are some things that are definite right now: we will be taking charter buses for a full-day event; we will be visiting the Georgia Aquarium and the Civil Rights Museum, and kids will eat at the Varsity for dinner. We are hoping to keep the trip at $40 or less per student after taking out funds from the One & Done fundraiser. We will be having more fundraisers throughout the year to hopefully make each student's cost less than $40. Our first fundraiser just for 5th grade was the bake sale. We have some Bruster's Ice Cream events coming up, and hopefully we can orchestrate another bake sale. We know that everyone wants to know a final cost, but the more we fundraise, the lower your cost will be. Please be patient with us as we try to reduce the cost for everyone!

Now that all that has been explained, let's look at what's going on in classes for the week!

Upcoming Events

• Mon, Feb 2: new seating chart!
  
• Wed, Feb 4: Statewide tornado drill
• Thurs, Feb 5: Talent show tryouts during activity in the gym; ELA quiz
• Fri, Feb 6: Math test (line plots), social studies test (WWII)

Reading & Writing
We have started our new novel study, Number the Stars. It takes place in Denmark during the Nazi invasion of WWII. It ties in directly with our WWII unit. Students will be covering all literary standards in reading the book. Students will also be writing each week to cover writing standards in class.

This week, we are reading chapters 2-6. We'll be focusing on these standards:
RL.3 - Comparing and contrasting life before and during the Nazi invasion; comparing and contrasting settings and responses of characters to conflict.
RL.4 - Analyzing the author's choice of words to describe the characters she's created
RL.5 - Understanding the author's use of foreshadowing in the novel; make predictions based on text structure thus far

In language arts, we are focusing on how to write the titles of works in our writing. Students will learn to put titles of poems, chapters, songs, or short stories in quotation marks; they will underline titles of albums, books, and magazines. We will have a quiz this Thursday over this skill. 

Math
WOW! I am SO VERY impressed with the students' math tests from Friday! They did an AWESOME job working with multiplying and dividing fractions. The most difficult area for students is deciding whether to multiply or divide in a word problem. We will continue to work on that in the future.

Now we are working with line plots (5.MD.2). We have a test this Friday. This is a short one-week unit, and it is fairly straight forward. 

Students will conduct surveys and tally the results. They will turn those results into fractions. They will then put the data on a line plot (see example above). This is pretty fun to do! The hardest part is then adding up the total amount represented on the line plot and then evenly redistributing the data. We'll work on this each day. The math homework for this week will be practice for this standard since we only have one week for this unit.

Social Studies
We are finishing up our study of WWII. Students will have a test on Friday over this material. Please check out our 5th grade social studies website for notes to study from! 
5socialstudies.weebly.com

Hello families! Back to a full 5-day week for us. We have a lot going on, so please read everything carefully.

School Supply Drive for Fairington Elementary School
My students, along with others at CAA, are collecting new school supplies and gently-used books for Fairington Elementary School in Lithonia, Georgia. Their school was set on fire and then flooded, so they lost many supplies. All supplies should be turned into my classroom by Friday. Thank you!

Bake Sale for 5th Grade Field Trip
This Thursday, 5th Graders are having a bake sale to support our big Atlanta field trip! PTA has graciously taken over the planning for this event, and our bake sale is the first fundraising opportunity out of many to come. We need families to send in already-bagged snacks to sell. We'd like to have all of our snacks on Wednesday morning. They will be sold for $0.50 each. 5th graders are also allowed to purchase if they would like. For more info, please contact our room mom, Elizabeth Embry.

Reading
We are finishing up our unit on primary and secondary informational sources this week. Students will have two writing activities to wrap up this unit. 

Writing
Students are working on writing a secondary source news article using information from primary source interviews. These will be due by Friday.

Math
Our BIG multiplying and dividing fractions test is THIS FRIDAY. We have all been working so hard on this unit! Study guides will come home on Tuesday afternoon! Please be sure your child takes the time to review each night before the test.

Social Studies
We are continuing our study of World War II this week. Again, this is a 3-week unit, so our test is next week. This week, we'll focus on Iwo Jima, D-Day, V-E Day, and V-J Day. We'll also be talking about the Holocaust and dropping the atomic bomb. Students are usually very sensitive to this information, so you may want to take some time to talk with him or her about what we are learning. 

Dear families,

I hope everyone has enjoyed their 3-day weekend. It is a wonderful time to reflect on peace, harmony, and justice - the legacy left to us by Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Let's take a look at what's coming up this week:

Upcoming Events 

• Tues, 1/20: Beginning Narrative Writing and WWII units
• Fri, 1/23: Planet essays due; Math Quiz

Reading
We are going to be looking at the nonfiction side of our point-of-view unit. We'll be talking about primary and secondary sources - what are they, the difference between the two, and the pros and cons of each type of nonfiction writing. We'll be studying three different articles about Pearl Harbor and analyzing their viewpoints on the war. The first article, "George Phraner's Brush with with Death Aboard the USS Arizona," is written by a young man in the American Navy. The second, "Honolulu After Pearl Harbor," is written by a female American journalist. The third article, "Attack at Pearl Harbor," is written by a Japanese bomber pilot. All three have very different views on Pearl Harbor. Students will love the details in the writing as they learn more about this important event in world history.

Writing
We are beginning a unit on narrative writing! Students will learn a little more about this type of writing on Tuesday, then we will dive into our first practice at narrative writing with a writing prompt entitled, "The Planet That Never Was." At this point, essays will be due on Friday, but if needed, we can push that back. Stay tuned!

Math
We are continuing our work multiplying fractions. We are continuing to work on multiplying mixed numbers, and we will be practicing with word problems in class. The test is next Friday; however, this week, students will have a quiz on Friday.

Social Studies
We are starting one of my favorite social studies units of the year - World War II! We'll begin looking at the causes of the war, then we'll study effects of the war on families across the world. We will also study Pearl Harbor in detail. This is a three-week unit for us. 

Dear families,

I'm looking forward to another great week with my 5th graders! Luckily the temperatures are up a little this week, so we are hoping for more outdoor recess. We have a lot of learning happening this week, so let's jump right to it.

Upcoming Events

• Tues, 1/13: Report cards come home; autobiographies are due
• Fri, 1/16: Math quiz, reading test; science test (1st, 2nd, and 3rd person narrators)
• Mon, 1/19: No school; MLK Day

Skills/Focus
We are back in our regular skills/focus classes for the week. All tests have been made up from prior to the break except for a couple of students who need to make up science tests for Mrs. Hawkins. If your child needs to do this, you will see a note on his or her report card.

Reading
We are continuing our work on point of view (1st, 2nd, and 3rd person narrators) as well as viewpoint - how an author feels about a certain topic. Most students at this point are able to correctly identify which type of narrator or the viewpoint of an author. However, many are still struggling with providing evidence from the text. I expect fifth graders, especially at this point in the year, to be able to tell me WHY they believe something. "I believe the speaker of this poem feels that war is dangerous because the poem states in the third line that..." This is the kind of writing/speaking I expect students to have in class. All answers should be followed up with evidence. You can help out at home with this by asking your child "why" whenever he or she states an opinion. They are used to hearing it from me, but hearing it from you will help reinforce the skill.

Writing
This week, we are focusing on adding details to our writing (revising) and checking our punctuation and capitalization (editing). Many students still leave out end punctuation in their essays and forget to capitalize proper nouns as well as the first words of sentences.

Math
In math this week, we are going to start exploring what it means to multiply fractions. When we say 1/3 times 4, what we really mean is "1/3 OF 4." We'll be doing some hands-on work with math manipulatives to start off multipying whole numbers times fractions, and we'll end the week looking at fractions times fractions. There will be a quiz on Friday.

Science
Students are with Mrs. Hawkins again this week to finish their unit on electricity and magnetism. They will have a test on Friday.