5B Activities for the Week of 9/30/13

Hello Parents and Students! 

Just a couple of reminders for this week.  First, Track and Field Day is this Monday from 2:00-3:20.  Go 5B!!  

Picture Day is Tuesday, October 1st.  The forms went home last Thursday.  Please return them by Tuesday if you are ordering pictures. 

Curricular Activities:

Spelling/Word Study:  This week we will begin studying our third syllable type which is the Open Syllable.  We will focus on the Open Syllable for two weeks.  This week, words will have a "Y" at the end.  The words are posted on the blog under "Spelling/Word Study."  As I mentioned at Curriculum Night, I will attach the word study parent resources in my email to all of you today.  

Math Accel:  Moving right along!  We finished our last Unit 1 lesson this past Thursday and Friday, Scientific Notation. Students should have their Unit 1 Study Guide completed by Monday for review.  The Unit 1 test will be on Wednesday.  We will begin Unit 2 on Tuesday.  Statistics and Probability will be our focus in Unit 2....one of my favorites to teach!

English Language Arts (ELA):  We have finally almost finished our Where I'm From poems.  It took a great deal longer than I had anticipated.  Most of us have finished writing them and we are currently typing them.  Soon, they will be printed!  :-)  We did cover the vocabulary for last week's reading story from our anthology, Sees Behind Trees, but we did not have the opportunity to read it or listen to the audiotape of it yet.  We will be doing this at the beginning of the week.  The students should expect a test on this story midweek.  Then, at the end of the week, we will be introduced to a new picture book to study, The Lotus Seed.  We will be studying this book for at least one week. Our read-aloud book continues to be, Because of Mr. Terupt and we're at the sad part now.  Our Cool Tool this week is, How To Cool Off and reading conferences will begin again! 

Science:  This will be our first week of science!  To start the unit, we will be studying the Scientific Method and will be doing an experiment later this week.  We will then be discussing various types of weather. 

That is all for now.  Please email me with any questions or concerns.  Enjoy this beautiful weekend!

Mrs. Bennick

5B Activities for the Week of September 23rd, 2013

Hello Parents and Students:

I hope that you are all out enjoying this beautiful weekend!  There is CoGat testing this week for all 2nd and 5th grade students.  Our days for testing will be Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for one hour each day.  We will be taking three 10-minute tests per day with breaks in between.

I graded many papers this weekend!  Please check your child's take-home folder tomorrow to retrieve these.  Last week was a very productive week!

Here's what's going on in the curricular areas this week:

Spelling/Word Study:  This week our focus will be on the VC-e type of syllable.  This is Vowel Consonant and helping "e" words such as globe.  We will use the same format as last week's test in which the students will be required to learn how to spell ten of these words and then diagram five of them. The ten words will be posted on my blog and the students will each receive a copy of these words tomorrow. Most everyone did very well on last week's spelling/word study test.  It was a success!  Therefore, I will be keeping this same format.

English Language Arts (ELA):  We will be finishing up our Where I'm From poems and will be typing them in the computer lab mid-week.  We will also be learning new vocabulary from a story in our reading anthology entitled, Sees Behind Trees.  We will be doing a couple of vocabulary activities with this story and then meeting in our inquiry circles to brainstorm questions relating to this story that will help us to better understand it.  We will be taking a test on this story on Friday.  Even though we will be reading and listening to the story on audiotape during class, I would highly recommend that all students take their reading books home to reread the story a few more times.  We will also be introducing the "COOL TOOL" lessons this week which target bullying and respectful behavior.
Our read-aloud book continues to be, Because of Mr. Terupt and we will be meeting our Kindergarten Buddies for the first time this Friday!  That is always so much fun!!!

Math Accel:  We are continuing on in Unit 1 this week.  Most students performed well on the exit slip that they completed last Friday.  This week, we will continue to learn about exponents and will move on to divisors and division of whole numbers.

Social Studies:  We will be having a test on Friday on the material that we have covered in social studies on explorers and exploration.  We will be creating our own study guides on Tuesday so that the students will have time to study at home for a few nights.  I will also allow the students time to study during class either in partners or groups for better understanding.  This week we will also be finishing up the explorer timelines that we have been working on.

Science:  We will be starting science next Monday, September 30th.  Our first topic will be weather which will include studying and making weather tools and layers of the atmosphere.

That's it for now.  Please email me with any questions or concerns.  Have a great week!

~Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of 9/16/13

Hello Parents and Students!

Here's what's going on in 5B this week:

First of all, Curriculum Night has been moved to this Wednesday evening from 6:30-8:00pm.  Hope you can all make it.  Remember, this evening is for parents only.

Spelling:  Since we had two heat days last week, I was not able to get through all of lesson one in spelling/word study.  Therefore, we will continue lesson one this week.  The spelling test will be on Friday and I will let the students know what they need to study so that there is no confusion.

Math Accel:  We are moving along in Unit 1.  We will be finishing up our menu project tomorrow and then we will begin multiplying by powers of 10 on Tuesday and exponents later in the week.  Expect an exit slip or quiz later in the week so that I can assess progress.  I will let the students know what to expect.

English Language Arts:  First, our family tree projects are due tomorrow.  We will begin presenting them as part of our listening/speaking component in ELA.  We will continue to delve into the poem by George Ella Lyon entitled, Where I'm From.  The students were briefly introduced to this poem last week, but it will become our main focus this week during ELA.  We will also begin to write our own Where I'm From poems but before we do that, I will need to teach a couple of mini lessons as to what to include in it.  Also, we will continue to read our Time For Kids magazines with our main focus being on close reading, finding important details in text and building background knowledge.  We will be completing a K-W-L chart and discussing what a theme is.  Our read-aloud book continues to be, Because of Mr. Terupt, which is getting very good now.  We've also been sneaking in a little grammar at www.freerice.com.  The students have really been enjoying this.

Social Studies:  We will continue to discuss explorers and exploration and this week we will dig a little deeper into a particular explorer of our choice.  Each student will choose an explorer that we've discussed, or will be discussing, and will begin researching their explorer in the computer lab.  We will then be creating our own timelines about our explorer.

That's it for now.  See you all Wednesday evening.

Have a good week!

Mrs. Bennick :-)

No school tomorrow, September 10th, in unairconditioned buildings!

Parents:

May Watts' Staff was just notified that there will be no school tomorrow, September 10th, for schools in the district that are not air conditioned.  This includes May Watts. 

Any homework that was assigned today will be due Wednesday, which is late start.

Have a nice evening.

Mrs. Bennick

5B News for the Week of September 9, 2013

Hello Parents and Students!

Just a reminder that Curriculum Night is this Wednesday evening at 6:30.  A detailed letter which includes the evening's schedule has been uploaded on my Edline page under "News".   Hope to see you all there!

Here's what's going on in 5B this week:

Spelling/Word Study:  We will begin our first spelling lesson this week which will focus on closed syllables.  In class, we will be discussing what a closed syllable is and how to identify closed syllables in words and diagram them.  There will be a test on Friday and I will let the students know tomorrow what they need to study.  More information about this new word study/spelling program will be introduced at curriculum night.

Math Accel:  We are moving right along in math!  We are about midway through the first unit and will be having our first quiz tomorrow.  (Monday)  This week, we will be reviewing multiplication of decimals which will include exponents and powers of 10.  Also, the students will be creating their own menus in class.  This will be about a week-long project.

English Language Arts:  We will be continuing on in our Identity theme.  This week, we will be reading the poem by George Ella Lyon entitled, Where I'm From.  The students will be creating their own Where I'm From poem and will also be asked to create their own family tree at home.  I will send more information home this week about this project.  I also created my own family tree which the students can refer to as a model when creating their own.  We will share our family trees early next week.  We are still reading the book, Because of Mr. Terupt and individual reading conferences started last week.  I've had the opportunity to conference with about six or seven students so far.  I plan to conference with about five to six students per day.

Social Studies:  We will continue to discuss explorers.  Our topics for this week will include Africa's Trading Empires and European Explorers.  Most of us finished our Think Quests, but there are still a few who need to finish up.  I did reserve some computers in the LMC cluster for tomorrow for those students who still need to finish.

It's going to be a busy week!  See you all Wednesday evening.

Mrs. Bennick

Chorus Permission Form and ELL Parent Night Info.

Hello Parents:

Information regarding the ELL Parent Night has been uploaded onto my Edline page under "News."  If you have a student who is currently receiving ELL services or who will be entering the ELL Program, please check Edline for more information.

Also, for those students who would like to join chorus, I uploaded the chorus permission form onto my Edline page also under "News". 

Mrs. Bennick

Here's what's going on in 5B this week! September 4-6

Hello Parents and Students!

 Just a reminder that there is no school tomorrow, Monday, due to it being Labor Day. Also, there is no school for students on Tuesday, due to Building Articulation Day. See you on Wednesday...remember it's late start!

 Here's what's going on in 5B this week:

 I needed to change some of my lesson plans last week due to the heat. We were scheduled to use the computer lab a few times to work on some lessons, but were unable to because the computer lab was being used as a cooling station for the students who are in upstairs' classrooms. Therefore, we stayed in our room and worked on other things. Therefore, some lessons that were planned for last week will be taught this week. Hopefully, the weather will cool down and schedules will be back to normal.

Spelling/Word Study: I will be introducing this brand new program to the students this week. The students will be taking some notes in their composition notebooks about this program, but will not have anything to study yet. Next week, since we will have five full days of school, the students will be assigned their first spelling/word study lesson. I will explain this program in more detail at Curriculum Night on September 11th. I will also have a handout for you that evening that will answer Frequently Asked Questions about this new program.

Math Accel: We are moving right along in math. We had some fun reviewing addition, subtraction and multiplication of decimals this past week playing Jeopardy. The students are diligently taking notes and previewing and reviewing videos. Several of the students stated that they felt Math Acceleration seems easy, but I assured them that it does get more difficult as time goes on. We are in our review stage right now. This week, we will continue on in Unit 1 working with decimals. We will be creating our own grocery lists and we may get to the menu activity, but that will most likely be next week.

English Language Arts (ELA): This week our focus will be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Last week the country celebrated the 50th anniversary of his famous speech, I Have A Dream. We will be reading an excerpt from this famous speech (close read) and the students will be responsible for analyzing it and answering questions about it. I will build background knowledge by reading a couple of MLK books and possibly watching a couple of short video clips about MLK. As usual, we will continue our read-aloud book, Because of Mr. Terupt. The students are really into this book and many of them can relate to the characters. We completed our character analysis. Since we were able to check out books from the LMC last week, the students should all have a current personal reading book that they are reading. We will continue to have silent reading in class and I will begin pulling the students aside individually soon for private reading conferences with me. We are starting to establish a routine in class now.

Social Studies: Since we could not work on our Think Quest last week because of the unavailability of the computer lab, we will try to get to it this week. I did reserve the lab for a couple of sessions this week. However, since we started a chapter in our social studies book, we will finish that first before moving on to the Think Quest.

Also, I have asked the students to keep any papers that we complete in their binders in the correct subject area so that they have them to refer to or study from later on. Currently, there are no scheduled quizzes or tests because we have not covered enough material yet. Stay tuned! That's it for now! Enjoy the remainder of the weekend!

 Mrs. Bennick :-)