5B Activities for the Week of December 1st, 2014

Hello Parents and Students,

Welcome back!  I hope you were all able to enjoy time with family and friends over Thanksgiving break.

Here are the reminders for the upcoming week:

1.  If you have not returned your field trip permission form for the Hill Middle School concert, please do so at your earliest convenience.

2.  Gates testing will occur this week for all 5th graders.  (5H & 5C Tuesday, 5V & 5B Thursday)

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

Word Study:  This week we will spend some time reviewing commonly misspelled homophones.  They have been posted to the blog.  The students should be able to use each of these words correctly in sentences.  They will not need to diagram the words for the test on Friday.

Math Acceleration:  We are moving along in Unit 3.  This week our focus will be on the coordinate plane, the x and y axes, the four quadrants, units/distances on the coordinate plane and geometric transformations, specifically reflections.  Expect a quiz and/or exit slip this week.

ELA:  We will continue the study of our anchor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King.  We will discuss vocabulary and participate in a close read.  We have begun our research for our 2nd Quarter performance task which includes identifying courageous Americans in American history.  Last week, we brainstormed a lofty list of people.  This week, we will begin narrowing down our choices of who we want to research.  The performance task includes researching the individual, writing an opinion piece of how he/she showed courage and then comparing/contrasting their individual with another person.  The final presentation will be a debate with a peer in class.  We will also be reading a story from our anthology entitled, Island of the Blue Dolphins and partaking in various activities with this story.

Science:  We have studied atoms, the periodic table, molecules, magnetism and the magnetic field thus far.  We have completed several science experiments and research that align with these topics as well.  This week, we will begin by studying and encompassing ourselves in an experiment involving static electricity.  We will then move onto electricity and electrical circuits.

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

Mrs. Bennick :-)