September 9th

Good Morning,

I can't believe we have been back in school for nearly a month. It is such a joy to teach this wonderful group of fifth graders. I wanted to take a few minutes to share some of the things we are working on in the classroom.

In reading, we are continuing with our study on activating schema and making connections. In fifth grade you will see a big push for kids to work on making connections between different texts. In class we have modeled this in a series of picture books. Students have done an incredible job identifying which connections and parts of their background knowledge help them make meaning and parts that can be distracting.

In writing, students have been digging ditches in their mind and searching for rivers filled with stones of meaning. In writing, sometimes the hardest thing to do is determine a topic to write about. Our figurative stones have provided us topics for us to explore the writing process in the genre of personal narratives. Last week, students should have received their name writing piece back in their Thursday folder. You may have also noticed a short constructed response on the back of each weekly spelling test. This year we will write for a variety of purposes and will look both at the ideas and content in our writing and our use of spelling and grammar rules.

In math, students have been using their understanding of multiplication facts to identify factors and multiples of given numbers. As students determined factors they began to see patterns that could be used to classify numbers as prime, square, and composite. We will continue to look at multiplication and develop multiple strategies to solve double digit by double digit multiplication problems. At home please continue to have your student practice their multiplication facts. 

In social studies, students began the year by looking at landforms found in different parts of the United States. Using their observations, students began to identify why certain states are grouped together in specific regions. Our geography unit centered around the Five Themes of Geography, which are location, place, human/environment interaction, movement, & region. We will continue to use these themes of geography as we study the early explorers. Students will think critically about how interactions and movement motivated and impacted explorers.

Thank you for sharing your child with me each day,
Megan