Thank you and Happy New Year

Dear Parents and Students,

I'd like to take this time to thank each and every one of you for the thoughtful gifts that you graciously gave me for the holidays.  The very generous class gift (Downtown Naperville gift card) I will enjoy using very much over the next few months.  I also sincerely appreciate all of the other gifts that you so thoughtfully gave me.  I am grateful that I have the opportunity to work with such a great group of students and families.  I wish you all a healthy, happy and prosperous new year!  Here's to 2015!

I would also like to thank all of our parent helpers who have been volunteering their time these past few weeks.  Thank you to Mrs. Freedlund, Mrs. Tracy and Mrs. Swords for mixing and serving the hot chocolate to over 100 students in record time!  Also, a huge thank you to Mrs. Straub and Mrs. Tegethoff for organizing an incredibly fun Winter party!  I couldn't do my job without all of your support!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of December 15th, 2014

Hello Parents and Students!

Here is the lofty list of reminders for this week: 

1.  The 800 Minute Book Club celebration will take place on Monday.  If your child qualified, please return the permission form for the brownies.
2.  Our class recently reached our goal of 1000 paw prints.  Therefore, we will be having a pizza snack on Tuesday afternoon.  This will not replace lunch.  Please return the permission form if you haven't done so already.
3.  We will be going to Hill MS for the chorus assembly. The assembly will take place in the morning and we will return to Watts prior to lunch.
4.  Our annual movie/hot chocolate event will take place on Thursday.  Please return the permission form for the hot chocolate as soon as possible.  Also…I am looking for two parent volunteers to help mix and serve hot chocolate.  Please email me if interested.  I would need you to arrive at 12:30 and it would take about an hour. 
5.  Our Winter Party will take place on Friday afternoon.  Looking forward to a fun time!

Winter Break begins Saturday, December 20th.  School resumes on Monday, January 5th.  Have a safe and enjoyable break! 

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

Word Study:  Our words will stay the same as last week.  The students will be responsible for only spelling the words and knowing their meanings.  There will be no diagramming.  The test will be on Wednesday.

Math Acceleration:  Our Unit 3 test will be on Tuesday.  We will not begin Unit 4 until after Winter Break.  We will be working on problem solving this week.  Remember, there will be no math class on Wednesday due to the field trip to Hill MS. Unit 4 will focus on Expressions.  I will be sending home the Unit 4 standards after Winter Break.

ELA:  We have a multitude of things going on in ELA currently.  First, we are continuing to work our way through our anchor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King.  We are continuing to gather information on our courageous American.  This is for our Quarter 2 performance task.  We have been studying how to write an opinion writing piece as this will be our next step in the performance task after we've gathered enough information.  The opinion writing piece will be ongoing for the next few weeks.  When the writing piece has been completed, the students will be preparing a debate to convince the class why their American was the most courageous in our history.  This should be fun!

Science:  We completed our unit on Atomic Structure, Magnetism and Electricity.  The test will be this Thursday.  We completed a study guide in class yesterday and the students should be studying it along with any other information they gathered throughout the quarter.

Social Studies:  We will begin SS again this week!  Our first topic will be the lost colony of Roanoke.  We will be doing a fun and creative crime study investigation (CSI) project with this topic.  This project will begin this week and will continue when we return to school in January.

Have a great week, everyone!  Please email me with questions.

Thank you!

Mrs. Bennick

5B Activities for the Week of December 8th, 2014

Hello Parents and Students!

There are no reminders for this week!

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

Word Study:  We will continue our study of prefixes.  The words have been posted to the blog.  As usual, the students will be responsible for spelling the words correctly, diagramming and learning the meanings of the words for Friday's test.

Math Acceleration:  We are nearing the end of Unit 3.  We will finish up our last couple of lessons this week.  We will then be creating a Unit 3 study guide.  The Unit 3 test will be the week of December 15th…either on Tuesday or Thursday of that week.  Currently, we are studying reflections and will be moving on to absolute value.

ELA:  We finished our close read from the book, The Liberation of Gabriel King last week.  We also listened to and discussed the story, Island of the Blue Dolphins, from our reading anthology.  We wrote a theme based on this story and then found evidence to support our theme.  This week, we will continue in Gabriel King working on vocabulary and text-dependent questions.  We will also be studying another story from our anthology entitled, Summer of Fire.  We will complete several activities related to this story.  We are continuing to research famous Americans who showed courage for our performance task.  All students have chosen their American to research and all is going well.

Science:  We have been incredibly busy in science these past two weeks.  We will finish up our Magnetism/Electricity unit this week by completing three experiments.  We will be making a switch, both a series and parallel circuit and an electromagnet.

Social Studies:  If time allows, we will be switching back to social studies this week.  Our topic will be colonization.

That is it for this week.  Please email me with questions.

Thank you and have a great week!

Mrs. Bennick