Week of 9/22

Some pictures from Pirate Day:

Dear families,

Thanks to those of you who attended our Curriculum Night on Thursday. I hope the information was beneficial to you! Also, thanks to all of you who sent in snacks for our Pirate Day celebration on Friday. We enjoyed eating piratey snacks during read aloud, and then kids read a little bit about sunken treasure. 

We have a full week coming up, so let's take a peek:

Coming Up This Week:

• Mon, 9/22: FALCAN Food Drive continues
• Wed, 9/24: Stuffed Animals/Caps for CURE ($1)
• Thurs, 9/25: Shurley English Chapter 2 Test; Boy Scouts Sign Up
• Fri, 9/26: Math Homework Due; Reading test (RL.1 and RL.2)

Coming Up Later This Month: 

• Tues, 9/30: Service Project Day
  

Reading/ELA
Standards

• RL.5.10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grades 4–5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
• RI.5.10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 4–5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
• RL.5.2. Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how a speaker in a poem reflects upon a text; summarize the text.

This Week's Focus
Theme - it's the author's message in a story. It's not specific to the characters, but a more generally applicable life lesson. For example, the theme in "Little Red Riding Hood" might be "Don't talk to strangers."
Activities (Test this Friday!)
Here's what we're doing in rotations for the week:
1. Buddy Work 

• Theme task cards - read short stories, find the theme

2. Exercise Your Brain (Mrs. Thompson)

• Theme cupcakes story board (discuss that theme is like the filling in a cupcake - it's hidden on the inside, but it's the best part!)

3. All by Myself

• Pausing Points - think about our book, Bridge to Terabithia, and determine some themes from the story (most novels have more than one theme)

4. Reading Online

• IXL Language Arts - 4th Grade HH.1 (commas in a series) and HH.4 (commas in direct addresses and after introductory words)

What We're Reading

• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
• several short stories

What We're Writing

• Reading response on Bridge to Terabithia

English/Language Arts (Chapter 2 Test on Thursday!)

• Commas (always, all year long!)
• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

Mathematics
Standards

• NBT.7 Add, subtract, multiply and divide decimals to hundredths, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used. 

A Note about the Last Assessment
Some students seemed to have some difficulty with NBT.1, recognizing place value - but it is primarily because they either didn't work out the numbers or they left off the value sentences we've been practicing for two weeks. For students who had difficulty with NBT.2, patterns in multiplying or dividing a number by a power of 10, the main issue was dividing a number by a power of 10. Here's a short video I made about how we did these in class and how to properly work on those standards:

Activities
We are working only with adding and subtracting decimals for the next two weeks. We will test again next Friday, (10/3). Students will need to be able to line up their decimals properly in order to add and subtract decimals. The hardest part for students will be when they add or subtract decimals to or from a whole number. Here's a short video I made to show you how we'll do that:

• Watch videos from LearnZillion (visit www.learnzillion.com and type in these quick codes: LZ546 and LZ547)
• Complete practice pages for our interactive math folders
• Add decimals, subtract decimals, and do both operations with decimals and whole numbers
• Write about our strategies. You may notice that the standard is asking students to WRITE in math - we will be working on that a lot this year!

Here is our rotation work!
1. Buddy Work

• Adding and subtracting decimal art

2. Exercise Your Brain (Mrs. Thompson)

• Practice performance tasks for NBT.7

3. All By Myself

• Math choice boards (based on NBT.1 - rounding decimals, from last unit)

4. Math Online

• IXL: E.1, E.2, and E.3 (students can work on this at home as well)

Assessment

• Next Friday: multiple choice, short answer (write the answer), and performance task

Science
Students will be working with Mrs. Hawkins for the next two weeks in science. They will be learning about how to classify plants and animals. To visit the 5th grade science website, please click here:
http://5thscience.weebly.com/