5B Activities for the Week of January 26, 2015

Hello Parents and Students!

First, I'd like to thank Mrs. Freedlund for coming in to teach Art Awareness this past week.  We learned a lot about Frank Lloyd Wright and got to create our own Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces!

There is only one reminder for this week: 

1.  Open House is this Wednesday, January 28th.  It is from 6:30-7:30pm.  Hope to see you all there.

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

Word Study:  We are on Lesson 13 this week which is the second half of suffixes.  The words for this week will end in (-al and -ity).  The test will be on Friday and will include spelling the words and identifying the definitions.

Math Acceleration:  We will finish Unit 4 early in the week.  We will be reviewing for the Unit 4 test on Tuesday and/or Wednesday.  The students will be making their study guides in class.  The Unit 4 test will be on Thursday.

English Language Arts (ELA):  We finished the book, The Liberation of Gabriel King, yesterday.  What a great story that is!  This week we will begin our anchor text for 3rd Quarter which is entitled, Red Kayak.  This book teaches the importance of making good decisions/choices.  Prior to starting the book, we will be discussing some vocabulary related to the book and background information. We also finished writing our opinion writing pieces last week.  This week the students will be presenting information on their courageous American and identifying and stating why their person is the most courageous American.  We will also be discussing commonalities and differences amongst the Americans.

Social Studies:  Our Colony Projects are looking great!  We having been doing a lot of research on the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies.  We hope to have all of our work on display in the classroom for Open House.

Science:  Students will be introduced to the Digestive System this week.  Over the course of the next few weeks, the students will be learning about the different organs that are involved in the Digestive System and what their functions are.

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

~Mrs. Bennick :-)

Hello Parents and Students!

Here are the reminders for this week:

There is no school tomorrow, January 19, due to the Martin Luther King holiday.

All students will be trying out musical instruments this Friday, January 23rd, during school hours.

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

Word Study:  We have a lengthy list of words this week and it's a short week.  We'll need to study hard each night.  Students will receive their word list on Tuesday and we will define/discuss each word on Tuesday as well.  This will give the students only three nights to study the words and definitions.  The test will be on Friday.

Math Acceleration:  We completed our lessons on Prime Factorization, Greatest Common Factor and Least Common Multiple.  This week we will discuss divisibility rules, the Distributive Property and move into writing and evaluating numerical expressions involving whole-number exponents.

English Language Arts (ELA):  We should finish up (or get close to) finishing our anchor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King, this week.  We will continue to study vocabulary from the text, complete some comprehension tasks and how they relate to the essential questions and design a power warrior badge.  We will be working on some social studies activities during ELA time as well since we have a lot going on with social studies currently.

Social Studies:  First, we will end our study of Roanoke this week.  The picture books describing our theories are coming along nicely.  After this, we will be participating in a group activity involving the thirteen colonies.  Groups will be broken down into the three regions of the colonies which include the New England Colonies, the Middle Colonies and the Southern Colonies.  A wide variety of activities will be completed some of which include creating maps, flip charts, graphic organizers, creating lists and a mind map. This project will take some time to complete and each group will present their information to the class when completed.

Science:  We will be weaving some science into the curriculum very soon and our next unit will be The Digestive System.

That's it for now.  Have a great week!

Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of January 12th, 2015

Hello Parents and Students!

Here are the reminders for the week: 

Whole group and individual CBM testing will occur on Monday.  Due to last week's cold days, it was necessary to move testing to this week.

The principal from Hill Middle School presented information to all 5th grade students yesterday about their course options for next school year.  Please take a look at the form, read it carefully and choose your child's option for next year.  Please make sure to sign the form and then return it to me at your earliest convenience, but no later than January 30th. Thank you.

Just a reminder that there is no school for students this Friday, January 16th.  It is a Teacher Work Day. Also, there is no school the following Monday, January 19th.  It is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day.

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

Word Study:  We will remain on the same word list as last week as we did not have enough time to study the words having missed two days.  The test will be on Thursday because there is no school on Friday.

Math Acceleration:  We will continue working in Unit 4.  We have completed lessons on prime factorization and greatest common factor.  We completed an exit slip on prime factorization and will be completing one on GCF early next week.  Our next lessons will include least common multiple and divisibility/divisibility rules.

ELA:  Our focus will continue to be on our anchor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King.  We have had a lot of great discussions about this book.  This week, we will learn new vocabulary words, answer a variety of text-dependent questions and participate in another close reading pertaining to this book.  We will continue to discuss Citizenship and the importance of being respectful.  The students will also be introduced to another story from our anthology entitled, Iditarod Dream.  We will revisit our essential questions and compare/contrast courage shown in both Gabriel King and Iditarod Dream.

Social Studies:  We have begun our research on the lost colony of Roanoke.  We are in the process of generating our own theories about what happened to the people of this lost colony.  The students will be writing a theory based on their research findings, describing their point of view along with listing reasons with supporting evidence to prove their theories.  We will also be relating the colonists' courage to that of Gabe King and the main character in the Iditarod story.  The students will be using an evidence based terms chart that I created to help them complete this activity. Their final product will be a completed picture book that displays/shows/proves their theory.

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

Thank you and have a great week!

Mrs. Bennick :-)

5B Activities for the Week of January 5, 2015

Hello Parents and Students!

Welcome back and Happy New Year!

Here are the reminders for the upcoming week: 

• Whole group and Individual CBM testing will occur this week on Thursday and Friday respectively
• Late lunches will now need to be placed in a bin just outside the main office.  Students will no longer be called down to the office to pick up their lunch
• On Friday, January 9th, the principal from Hill Middle School will be presenting information, to all 5th grade students, regarding registration for next school year.

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

Word Study:  This week we will be focusing on Greek and Latin roots.  The roots we will work on this week include -man, -manu and -ject.  The words have been posted to the blog.  The test will be on Friday.  Students will be responsible for spelling the words and knowing each words' meaning.  They will not be responsible for diagramming the words.  

Math Acceleration:  This week we will begin Unit 4, Expressions.  The learning standards will be coming home with your child on Monday.  There will be a pre-assessment on Monday and our first few lessons will focus on prime factorization, greatest common factor and least common multiple. 

ELA:  We will continue to work our way through our anchor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King.  We are currently on Chapter 9.  We will be participating in a close reading for this chapter.  Our topic in Citizenship this week will be exploring digital manners and reviewing our classroom behavior matrix.  During DLT (Differentiated Learning Time) we will continue to research our courageous American and begin to write our opinion writing piece.    

Social Studies:  Our topic this week will be on the lost colony of Roanoke.  We will be partaking in a CSI type of activity to state our opinions/evidence about what could have possibly happened to the people of the colony.  Our culminating activity for the week will be creating a picture book that will show clues and evidence to support our theories.  I have reserved many books pertaining to Roanoke to assist the students in developing and designing their picture books. 

That's it for this week!  Please email me with any questions. 

~Mrs. Bennick :-)