5B Activities for the Week of 10/28/13

Hello Parents and Students!

Here are the reminders for this week:

1.  We will be sharing "campfire" stories in 5B this Wednesday.  Please have your child bring an extra snack to school to eat during this time.

2.  The Fall Festival/Halloween Parade will take place this Thursday, October 31st.  The parade begins at 2:00 and will be outdoor weather permitting.  In the case of inclement weather, the parade will be canceled.  The parties will begin at 2:30 and end at 3:15.  For more information about this event, please read the Halloween letter under "news" on my Edline page.

3.  Report cards will go online this Friday, November 1st, for parents to view.

4.  Picture retakes will take place on Tuesday, November 5th.  All students who are new to Watts that started after the original picture day will have their photo taken.  If you would like your child to have their photo retaken, please call the office to let them know.

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

Word Study/Spelling:  We are on Lesson 8 this week.  We will be learning a new syllable type which will be the Consonant -le (C-le).  These are words that end in (-le).  The words have been posted to the blog.  The test will be on Friday.

Math Accel:  Early in the week, we will continue to work on line plots.  Then, we will be moving onto step graphs.  We have about 2-3 lessons left in Unit 2.

English Language Arts (ELA):  This week, we will continue our read-aloud book, On The Day I Died.  We will also be reviewing some poems that we did not get to last week.  One is an Emily Dickinson poem entitled, Because I could Not Stop for Death and the other is Ghost House by Robert Frost.  We will be analyzing these poems by doing various activities with them.  We finished writing and illustrating our six word memoirs last week and this week we will be writing a full blown memoir of a special time/event in our life.  We will continue with individual reading conferences and we will all get to share some spooky stories at our campfire activity this Wednesday.  If we have time, we will be reading a TFK about bats.  Our newspaper (The Bennick Biz) is up and running and we are hoping to put out our first edition very soon.  Also, we got to spend some time with our Kindergarten Buddies last Friday, which is always a good time.  :-)  I will post some pictures on Edline of buddies as soon as I get a chance.

Science:  Science ended last Friday.  However, we will be finishing up some cloud research on Monday.  We completed a couple of experiments last week along with our cloud research.  A study guide will be sent home Monday and the weather test will be Friday.

Social Studies:  Social studies will begin again this week.  Some of the questions that we will be answering include...Why did settlers come to America?  How did location and resources shape the colonial economy?  What was the Triangular Trade Route?  Which European nations claimed territory in North America by the mid 1700s?

The weeks are flying by!  If you have any questions or concerns, please email me.

Thank you and have a great week!

Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of 10/21/13

Hello Parents and Students,

Here are a few reminders for this week.  First, Stem Night is on 10/21 from 6:00-8:00pm.

Also, if you haven't returned the Parent-Teacher Conference form, please return it at your earliest convenience.  Thank you.

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

Word Study/Spelling:  This week we will be focusing on the soft sounds of "C" and "G".  You will hear these sounds in words such as cycle and gigantic.  The words have been posted to the blog.  The test will be on Friday.  We will not be learning a new syllable type this week.

Math Accel:  We are moving right along in Unit 2.  This week, we will be focusing on Box Plots and Line Graphs.  As usual, the students will be completing exit slips and/or a short quiz to go along with these lessons.

English Language Arts (ELA):  This week in ELA we will be working on a few different things.  First,  in our spare time :-), we will be signing up and creating the 1st Edition of the Bennick Biz Newspaper. The students are very excited about this!  For current events, we will be completing a TFK and we have started reading our second read-aloud book entitled, On The Day I Died.  The kids are really getting into it!  We will also be doing a couple of close reads on two or three poems.  The poems that we will be analyzing are The Haunted Chamber by H.W. Longfellow, Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson and possibly Ghost House by Robert Frost.  We will also be using just a bit of our ELA time to squeeze in more science as we are very quickly approaching the end of the first quarter....time is flying!

Science:  We completed our Layers of the Atmosphere project last Friday and we will be taking a quiz on it on Tuesday.  The students should have brought home their study guide on Friday to look at/study over the weekend.  This week we will be learning about and making a Barometer, doing at least two experiments about air and water and then researching clouds.  Busy, busy, busy!!!

That's it for now.

Have a great week!

Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of 10/14/13

Hello Parents & Students:

Columbus Day is tomorrow, Monday, October 14th.  There is no school.  Also, due to Teacher Institute Day on Wednesday, school will be dismissed at 12:15pm.  Remember, that's a late start Wednesday!

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

Word Study/Spelling:  Since this is a short week, we will be reviewing the three types of syllables that we have learned so far.  These three types include the Closed Syllable (CL), the Vowel Consonant, silent "e" (VC-e) and the Open Syllable (OP).  The spelling words have been posted to the blog.  The test will be on Friday.  The students should be able to label all three types of syllables at this point.

Math Accel:  We are currently working in Unit 2 which focuses on various types of graphs.  We have studied statistical questions, dot plot graphs, bar graphs and stem and leaf plots.  This week we will begin with histograms.  Also, the extra credit bar graph assignment is due by this Wednesday if you haven't already turned it in and would like to.

English Language Arts (ELA):  We finished our first read-aloud book, Because of Mr. Terupt, and have now begun our second read-aloud, On The Day I Died.  This is a book of short scary stories which is perfect for October!  We will be finishing up the TFK that we started last week and taking a quiz on it early in the week.  Also, we will be reading a story from our anthology entitled, Satchmo's Blues which discusses the life of Louis Armstrong.  We will be doing various activities to go along with this story such as discussing New Orleans, LA, the different culture, Jazz music, character traits and dreams becoming a reality.  We will be fitting in some silent reading time and writing in our Reading Response Journals.  We have some computer lab time this week to continue working on our Writer's Workshop projects.

Science:  We finished discussing/making weather tools.  There will be a short quiz on weather tools later in the week or early next week.  Currently, we are working on a Layers of the Atmosphere project.  When that is completed, we will move onto cloud research.

Enjoy the remainder of the long weekend!  See you Tuesday.

~Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of 10/7/13

Hello Parents & Students!

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

First, I uploaded our Scientific Method experiment videos to Edline this morning.  You can access them by going to my Edline page and on the left side you will see a folder entitled, Scientific Method experiment videos.  Click on that and all four of them are in that folder.  I also put a slide show of pictures I've been taking in class.  There are some with our Kindergarten buddies and various other ones.  For some reason, some of the pictures are sideways or upside-down.  I have no idea why.  I will try to turn them around when I get a chance.

Our first marble celebration was a success!  The kids all enjoyed playing games on the computers and/or their electronic devices and chewing gum all day was very enjoyable!  :-)

As of last Wednesday, I am now officially BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) trained!! The students began bringing in their devices and we had our first BYOT lesson.  We enjoyed going to TodaysMeet to review for our upcoming Scientific Method quiz.

This week we have Interim Assessments on Thursday and Friday.  There are two math tests and two reading tests.

Spelling/Word Study:  This week we will continue working on the Open Syllable type.  The words are posted on the blog.  Our test will be on Friday.

Math Accel:  We completed our first test this past week and have now begun Unit 2.  So far, we have discussed, written and shared statistical questions.  We will be moving on to dot plots and bar graphs this week.

ELA (English Language Arts):  We started our first Writer's Workshop projects last week and will continue to work on them this week.  We have just about finished our first read-aloud book, Because of Mr. Terupt, and will be starting a new one this week.  It is entitled, On The Day I Died and it's a book of short scary stories....always a favorite in 5th grade!  We read and discussed the book, The Lotus Seed last week and worked on developing our vocabulary with new words from that story.  This week, we will be comparing the main character from that book with the main character from the story, Sees Behind Trees.  We will be completing a venn diagram.  If we can get through all of that, which I doubt, we will begin working on memoirs.

Science:  We have been studying the Scientific Method and we will have a quiz on the steps of the SM on Monday.  We have also watch a couple of short weather videos and discussed weather instruments.  We will begin making an anemometer this week in groups and then will continue on with weather tools such as the barometer, thermometer and wind vane.

That's it for now.  Please email me with any questions you may have.

Have a great week!

~Mrs. Bennick :-)