Week of 9/22

Dear Families~

We had a great week last week. A special thank you goes to everyone who sent in snacks for us to celebrate International Pirate Day on Friday. We sang a pirate song with the help of Mrs. Thompson's class, read a story about pirates, learned about sunken treasure, and even told some pirate riddles all while eating our piratey snack.

Last week we also started a new behavior system in our classroom. We have set daily, weekly, and monthly goals as a class. We are using Class DoJo and it is going very well. You may find that your child comes home with a "good note" in their agenda. This means that they earned 5 or more positive points during the day. Please be sure to ask them about it.

COMING UP THIS WEEK:

• Mon, 9/22: FalCan Food Drive continues

*Please take some time to go through your can foods and send in any that you can. Our class has set a goal of bringing in 60 cans. We can do this. Please send them to our classroom. Thank you for your help with this.

• Tues, 9/23: Tuesday Red Folders come home. Please review the papers inside and sign the GREEN sheet stating you have seen the papers.

•  Wed, 9/24: Stuffed Animals Caps for the CURE $1
• Thurs, 9/25: Shurley English chapter 2 test; Boy Scout Sign up
• Fri, 9/26: Reading Test (RL.1 and RL.2); Math homework due

COMING UP VERY SOON:

• Tues, 9/30: Service Project Day--Please HELP with this wonderful PROJECT!

*We will be making sack lunches for those in need on this day. We will need the following items:

1. 5 jars of peanut butter 
2. 5 jars of jelly
3. 5 loaves of bread
4. 1 box of X-large ziplock sandwich bags
5. apples
6. oranges
7. sweet treat (individually wrapped)
8. 2 cases of water 
9. brown lunch bags
10. latex or plastic gloves for students to wear

Our class goal is to have 50 packed sack lunches. Please begin to send in the non perishable items (peanut butter, jelly, ziplock bags, etc.) as soon as possible. If you'd like, please use the volunteer SIGN UP NOW button on the right hand side of the blog to sign up to bring something for this project. Thank you in advance for your help!

Parent/Teacher/Student CONFERENCES
If you'd like to schedule a parent conference with me, please call our school office at 770-287-2044. I am available to meet with you on Monday/Tuesday/Friday during my planning time 8:30-9:00. If this time does not work for you, we could meet on Monday, October 13th (Teacher work day). 

Science

Students will be working with Ms. Creel for the next 2 weeks in science. They will be learning about how to classify plants and animals. Please feel free to visit the 5th grade science website. Click here for more information 5thscience.weebly.com

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.  

Activities

• Watch videos from LearnZillion (visit www.learnzillion.com)
• 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! 

Take a look at this youtube.com video that can be very helpful to what we are doing this week. 

Here is our rotation work!
1. Buddy Work

• Adding and subtracting decimal art

2. Exercise Your Brain (Mrs. Weiser)

• 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

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. Weiser)

• 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, Maniac Magee, and determine some themes from the story (most novels have more than one theme)

4. Reading Online

• Typing Pal

What We're Reading

• Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
• several short stories
• Wonder by R. J. Palacio 

What We're Writing

• Opinion about whether or not homework is beneficial
•  Opinion about if cell phones should be allowed in schools

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

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