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.
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
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.
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
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
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