WEEK OF NOVEMBER 3

New E-Book for Science
Your student received instructions for accessing the Science textbook online. I also demonstrated its use for the students to show them how easy it is to navigate and some of the neat features. Not only can the e-book be used at home when the text is needed to complete homework, but it can also be used to review vocabulary and hear the text read aloud. Be sure to check it out!

Attention Parents - Volunteer Opportunity!
The Social Studies committee is looking for two parents who have an education or history background to be involved in the adoption of new Social Studies textbooks. You would have to meet with the committee and provide input choosing our textbook for the coming years. The Social Studies committee will be meeting once every other month for the next two years. Please email mpellin@ccsd66.org if you would be interested in joining the Social Studies committee.


Subject Update:

Science and Social Studies (Homeroom)

• Science - The students will be learning about weather patterns. We will complete an investigation of local weather patterns by tracking daily temperature, precipitation, wind direction and speed, and cloud conditions in our school area.
  
• Social Studies - We will begin Chapter 6 which takes a look at life in the English colonies. We will hear about some of the goods produced by early colonists. Look for information coming home late next week about a classroom trade fair!
  

Language Arts Block

• Spelling - Lesson 11 will focus on adding the suffix -ly to adjectives ending in -al.
  
• English - The students will review capitalization and punctuation on Monday to help them prepare for the Unit 5 Test scheduled for Wednesday, November 5th!
  
• Reading - We will be learning how to make inferences while reading. Students will use information in the text along with their own knowledge to predict and infer.
  

Math Classroom

• Math - The students will be representing functions with a table and an equation. Functions are relationships between two quantities where one depends on the other. For example, in the equation m x 4 = n, the value of n depends on the value of m. We will also work to find whole number solutions to inequalities. For example, if a ≤ 4, the whole number solutions for this inequality are 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Mark Your Calendar:

Nov. 3 - Prairieview Mock Election

Nov. 4 - No School (Teacher Institute Day)

Nov. 11 - No School (Veteran's Day)

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WEEK OF OCTOBER 27

Halloween Party Reminders
Please understand that students will not have use of the washrooms for costume changes. The students will have a classroom designated for girls and another designated for boys to get ready for the costume parade. If your student needs a mirror for applying makeup, he/she should bring one from home. Also, remember that costumes must be appropriate for school. No weapons of any kind will be permitted. Students may need to alter costumes slightly for our school celebration.


Subject Update:

Science and Social Studies (Homeroom)

• Science - The students will learn about conditions that affect the water cycle.
• Social Studies - We will focus our attention on election coverage. The students will receive more information about key issues to think about and discuss next week. The students have expressed some great opinions and thoughts about the two main candidates - can't wait to see who gets the most votes in our mock election on November 3rd!
  

Language Arts Block

• Spelling - Lesson 10 will focus on the spelling rules for consonant + y words and vowel + y words. (We will skip Writing Lesson 9.)
• English - The students will review quotation marks before learning how to write abbreviations and titles correctly. There will be a Unit 5 Test over capitalization and punctuation on Wednesday, November 5th!
• Reading - We will be reading some other tall tales in order to identify the elements of a tall tale and visualize the very unique characters. We will also so some word work with prefixes and suffixes to help us build up our vocabulary.

Math Classroom

• Math - The students will apply the order of operations to solve problems, solve algebraic expressions, and apply the properties of addition and multiplication in order to solve equations more easily.

Mark Your Calendar:

Oct. 29 - Junior Achievement (Session #4)

Oct. 31 - Junior Achievement (Session #5)

Oct. 31 - Halloween Parade and Party

Nov. 3 - Prairieview Mock Election

Nov. 4 - No School (Teacher Institute Day)


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WEEK OF OCTOBER 20

Don't Forget - Sack Lunch Friday!
Please remember that on Friday, October 24th, the 5th graders have a field trip to see "The Legend of Pocahontas." Since we will be returning to school after the start of our regularly scheduled lunch, the students must bring a sack lunch to enjoy that day.

Good-Bye, Mr. Coffee!
We sadly said good-bye to Mr. Coffee, Mrs. Swaekauski's student teacher who has been teaching with us since the beginning of the school year. We celebrated with a pizza party lunch (provided by Mr. Coffee) as we gave him a booklet of personal student notes and some gifts purhased with your donations. It was a nice final farewell!


Subject Update:

Science and Social Studies (Homeroom)

• Science - The students will be learning about conditions that affect the water cycle. A cycle is something that continues to move around and around. Have your child think about how water might move around and around in a cycle.
• Social Studies - We will be reading about the 13 colonies and how the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies were different from each other. The Chapter 5 Test is scheduled for Friday, October 24th!! Please start reviewing notes and rereading the chapter early -there is a lot of information covered in this chapter. We will play a review game on Thursday as a fun review for the test.

Language Arts Block

• Spelling - Lesson 8 is a review of lessons 1-7. We will work with the words during the week, but there will be NO TEST!
• English - The students will be learning all about the use of quotation marks. We use quotation marks in our writing to show a speaker's exact words. Quotation marks can be tricky because there are many rules of punctuation and capitalization to remember.
• Reading - We will begin another vital reading skill - visualizing. The students will read texts with rich description in order to practice visualizing the information.

Math Classroom

• Math - The Chapter 3 Test over division of 1- and 2-digit numbers is scheduled for Tuesday, October 21st! Students should review the information and examples in their spiral notebooks and complete some practice problems for each lesson to help them prepare for the test.

Mark Your Calendar:

Oct. 22 - Early Dismissal (11:00 a.m.)

Oct. 22 - Junior Achievement (Session 3)

Oct. 24 - The Legend of Pocahontas Field Trip - sack lunch!!


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WEEK OF OCTOBER 13

Student Progress Information
If you have not already done so, please check your student's current progress on ParentConnect. Contact your child's teachers if you have any questions or concerns regarding grades or work habits. Also, know that any student who is working below grade level expectations will receive paper copies of progress reports via U.S. mail. There will be a cover letter accompanying the reports that will need to be signed and returned as soon as possible.

Junior Achievement
We will be starting the Junior Achievement program this week. In this program, a volunteer from a business in our community comes into the classroom to talk about how businesses work. Mr. Laviste will visit our classroom for our first session on Thursday. Welcome, Mr. Laviste!


Subject Update:

Science and Social Studies (Homeroom)

• Science - The students are learning about the causes of weather.
• Social Studies - We are learning about the many early colonies in North America. Ask your child to tell you some of the reasons why people settled in the New World and how life was difficult in those early settlements.
  

Language Arts Block

• Spelling - Lesson 7 will focus on the spelling of words containing hard and soft g sounds.
• English - The students will use commas to separate the words in a series, address a particular person, and use interjections. A review worksheet over these uses of commas is planned for Thursday, October 16th.
• Reading - The students should have received teacher approval for their mystery book choice by October 10th! Once book choices were approved, students received special bookmarks to help them divide up the reading into 2 weeks of work. This should then give students at least a week to create the puzzle project. Remember the final puzzle project must be turned in on or before October 31st!! In the classroom, students will be working with main idea and details. They will also identify information that is relevant and irrelevant to a main idea.

Math Classroom

• Math - Students will learn about dividing by 2-digit divisors. This puts into action the 5 steps of division we are already using when dividing by 1-digit divisors, but we will need to use estimation to help us figure out the digits in the quotient. Again, students must continue to work on basic fact fluency!!

Mark Your Calendar:

Oct. 13 - No School (Columbus Day)

Oct. 16 - Junior Achievement (Session #1)

Oct. 16 - Prairieview Book Fair and Social (6:30 - 8:00 p.m.)

Oct. 17 - Junior Achievement (Session #2)

Oct. 22 - Early Dismissal (11:00 a.m.)

Oct. 24 - "The Legend of Pocahontas" Field Trip

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WEEK OF OCTOBER 6

It's An Election Year!
We have had some great discussions in the classroom about the republican and democratic candidates running for U.S. President. I hope you find opportunities to talk with your 5th graders at home about this exciting election. We will continue to learn more about the two major political parties, the candidates, and the election process as we prepare for a mock election in November.

Checking Student Progress
Tuesday, October 7th marks the midpoint of the 1st Trimester. Please check your child's progress on ParentConnect. As always, contact your child's teacher(s) if you have any questions or concerns.

Field Trip - Change of Date!
I want to remind parents that there was a change in date for the 5th grade field trip to see "The Legend of Pocahontas." We will be going one week later than originally scheduled. Students will need a sack lunch on our new field trip date - Friday, October 24th!


Subject Update:

Science and Social Studies (Homeroom)

• Science - The students will be starting an Earth Science unit about "Cycles on Earth and in Space." We will begin by learning about the atmosphere.
• Social Studies - As we continue to learn about Jamestown, the first successful English colony, the students will go to the computer lab to make decisions like a settler of long ago. This experience will help the students recognize how the environment and existing people in America either helped or hindered the success of a colony. Then the students will read about the colony of Plymouth.

Language Arts Block

• Spelling - Lesson 6 will focus on words that form plurals with -es.
• English - The students will be learning about commas. We will begin our comma work with the book, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." This book demonstrates all the ways to use commas in sentences. It also does a wonderful job illustrating how the use and misuse of commas can really change the meaning of a sentence!!
• Reading - We have introduced the October "Mystery Book Puzzle" project to the students. Hand-outs included directions for completing the project, a worksheet to use while reading the book, the grader we will use to assess the project, and a note home regarding book choices. Please review this information with your child. Book choices for this project are due Friday, October 10th! In class, we will be working on summarizing stories by thinking about the parts of a story.

Math Classroom

• Math - The students will continue to work on dividing whole numbers. Don't forget to keep reviewing those basic facts!!

Mark Your Calendar:

Oct. 7 - 1st Trimester Midpoint

Oct. 13 - No School (Columbus Day)

Oct. 16 - Book Fair/Social (PV 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.)

Oct. 22 - Early Dismissal (11:00 a.m.)

Oct. 24 - 5th Grade Field Trip (The Legend of Pocahontas)

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