Dear families,

I hope you have enjoyed your weekend! This is a busy academic week for the students, so let's go ahead and dive into what's expected for the week:

Upcoming Events

• Mon, 2/9: English Language Arts Benchmark Test #1 (multiple choice and short response); Young Americans performance at 1:00 in gym
• Tues, 2/10: English Language Arts Benchmark Test #2 (writing about reading)
• Wed, 2/11: Math Benchmark test; Step & Musical performances at 8:20 and 9:20; Progress Reports come home
• Fri, 2/13: Math homework due; Valentine's Day snack at 12:45 (no party)

Coming Next Week

• Mon, 2/16: NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS (teacher work day)
• Thurs, 2/19: Math Test (Coordinate Grids & Mathematical Patterns)
• Fri, 2/20: Field Trip to Atlanta History Museum for interactive Civil War exhibit

FYI: Benchmark Tests
The benchmark tests we are giving this week will help give the students an idea of what the Milestones tests will look like in April. You (and the students) should not worry - we've been testing them this way all year. Tests will include multiple choice questions and some writing questions. I believe that students are being well-prepared. These tests will inform us about student progress, but they will not be used as grades for report cards.

English Language Arts
In reading, we are continuing our study of the historical fiction novel, Number the Stars. We will read the next few chapters and students will write journal responses that are standards-based and reflect on what students have read so far. One of these prompts will be graded at the end of the week. We are focusing this week on the following standards:

• RL.1 Quoting from the text; inferencing
• RL.3 Comparing and contrasting settings and character responses
• RL.4 Figurative Language
• RL.5 Story structure

In language arts, students are working on perfect verb tenses. For example: 

• I had walked
• I have walked
• I will have walked

Students will have a small quiz on Friday over the perfect verb tenses.

Math
Students will love what we are starting this week! We are working on coordinate grids (only in the first quadrant, so we are only working with positive integers). Students will love playing games like battleship and cracking secret codes as we work on this unit! On Friday, we introduce the second part of our unit which is about mathematical patterns. This part is more difficult for students. We will test next Thursday.


Science
Students are with Mrs. Hawkins for the next three weeks as they discuss earth science!

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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.