August 27th Newsletter

5^th Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Sandusky’s Class

Important Dates:

·         8/27- School Library Visit

·         9/3- No School

·         9/7-Early Out (Fall Festival)

·         9/14- Mid-quarter

Monday	Art
Tuesday	PE 1
Wednesday	Music 2
Thursday	Computers
Friday	PE 2

ELA (Sandusky)- This week we will be focusing on how to compare and contrast, figurative language, and parts of speech. The parts of speech we will be focusing on are interjections and prepositions. For figurative language we will be looking at exaggeration, alliteration, and personification. We’ve been very busy lately, so students haven’t had lots of AR time, so please make sure that your child is reading at home. Students should be reading chapter books at this point and need to be bringing them with them to class every day.
List 3
cheerleaders
read
lead
race
racer
cheer
dealer
reader
search
cheered
searcher

ELA(Shultz)-. The pre-test for poetic devices will be coming home this week. We used this test as a review tool and while everyone received a grade for participating in the review of the test, he or she did not receive the actual grade they earned. We will have a post-test that will look very similar this Wednesday. 
This week, we will be presenting our biopoems and beginning our lessons on comparing and contrasting, as well. Please help me in encouraging your student to read at home each night. I have shown students how reading just 4 extra pages a night will result in 20 pages over the course of a school week. Students should be at 22% of their AR goal by the end of the week.
The new take-home spelling paper is in this week's folder. We are working to discover patterns in writing words. This week's pattern is: er, meaning person or thing that does something.

 SCIENCE: Students should be bringing home their test over Scientific Method in Red Folders today.  This week we will begin our exploration on cells and body systems.  Tuesday we will walk over to Mr. Bond's classroom at the high school to observe plant and animal cells under the microscope.
Thanks,
Mr. Richards   

Math: Math is FLEXED!!! We were able to bump our pre-assessment to Monday, due to a computer issue with STAR Math Testing... and therefore we were able to start flexing on Thursday of last week!! We feel so much better having the students in flex groups. Students will mostly stay with the teacher they are with now, for Math, for the majority of the year. We will move students, based upon needs/observations, to best suit the individual student. We are very excited about this!! Students will be working in SMALL GROUPS to wrap up our review skills next week. We have re-launched ReFlex math! This is something that students can work on at home. Students can also work on Khan at home! Both are linked on Mr. Siders' (www.stjschools.org/nsiders) and Mrs. Meurer's (www.mrsmeurer.weebly.com) websites!

August 20th Newsletter

5^th Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Sandusky’s Class

Important Dates:

·         8/20- School Library Visit

·         9/7-Early Out (Fall Festival)

·         9/14- Mid-quarter

Monday	PE 1
Tuesday	Music 2
Wednesday	Computers
Thursday	PE 2
Friday	Music 1

ELA (Sandusky)- Students had their first spelling test on Friday! Overall grades were great! This week students will be writing their Fall Writing Assessment. They will be given the prompt on Tuesday and then will follow the writing process. The FWA is a completely independent piece without instruction, it gives us a good idea what the student can accomplish independently. We will also be working on poetic devices and figurative language. Monday we will have a pretest to determine what students know about the topic. It is NOT for a grade.
All students have an AR level and goal at this point. If you have a computer at home you can follow the directions that came home in this week’s folder with the heading ‘Renaissance Home Connect’. The sheet gives you your student’s login name and password. You can sign up for email alerts when your child takes a test; it allows you to look at the tests your child’s already taken, and to keep track of their comprehension and AR goal. It does NOT allow you to take tests at home. Please remember it is important for your child to be reading at home!
List 2
ear
race
ring
grind
glide
ranch
dance
racer
racing
glider
dancer
dancing
grinder
rancher
grinned
earring
children
grandchildren

ELA(Shultz)-. All of our hard work during the first full week of school paid off! I am currently in the trenches grading biopoems and I am very satisfied and pleased with how hard everyone worked. Many students were experiencing a “research” based project for the first time, but I think that we can all be proud of what was achieved during the first attempt. This week, we will begin discussing and reading poetry more. We will talk about figurative language and how poets and authors manipulate words to paint a picture. We will also be looking at the art of Joseph Cornell. This week, we will begin our spelling program as well.
I am really excited to be able to toss aside the idea of memorizing arbitrary words to move to a program of learning about how words are formed. In your student’s red folder, you will find a take home page with the letters we are manipulating this week. Please encourage your student to tear apart the letters and then to move them around to form anything from a 3 letter word to using all of the letters to make one big word. We will be putting the words on note cards and each individual will maintain a set over the school year. This way, we can sort words according to vowel placement, prefixes, root words…there are so many possibilities! The focus for this week’s lesson is er/est, meaning more and most and re, meaning back or again.
AR goals have been set, and I have given each student a wide range from which to read. I believe that in order to develop life long readers we have to give them the opportunity to choose and to be successful. I conference with students weekly about their books and will help them to fine tune how they find “good fit” books as we move along. Please feel free to contact me! There is also a Parent Connect Form on the way so that you can access your student’s performance in Renaissance Place. They will not be able to access tests from home

 SCIENCE:   Students did a great job with their egg drop last Friday.  Thanks to all those who participated.  This week we will finish our unit on Scientific Inquiry.  We will take a test on Friday, so you can be looking for a study guide on Thursday night.  If you would like a copy of the study guide emailed to you, please send me a request at jrichards@stjschools.org

Math: Students STAR Math tested today in math classes. We are going to have pre-assessment on Wednesday. The pre-assessment will be over Unit One material. The assessment will cover skills that we will focus on for the next few weeks. We will use the data from the assessment to set up our first, initial set of flex groups. The flex groups will start on August 28th. (next Tuesday) This week students will spend time in each math class wrapping up review concepts: place value (whole numbers/decimals), multi-digit multiplication, area, and perimeter.

List1

Watermelons

low

new

seal

name

mean

east

lower

newer

water

renew

rename

reseal

newest

lowest

melons

meaner

meanest

eastern

Biopoem Research

We will begin our rough drafts on our Biopoem tomorrow!! If your child still has research to do they need to be completing that at home this evening.

August 13, 2012

5^th Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Sandusky’s Class

Important Dates:

·         8/13- School Library Visit

Monday	Music 2
Tuesday	Computers
Wednesday	PE 2
Thursday	Music 1
Friday	Art

ELA (Sandusky)-
This week we will be starting Unit 1 in ELA (English Language Arts). Our first project is a biopoem, students will be choosing a famous scientist and creating poem from a format provided for them. If you’d like to see it, go to www.stjschools.org, click on elementary, fifth grade, and then my name/picture, if you’d like a more direct route you can also type in www.mrssandusky.weebly.com. Once you’ve gotten to my site, click on Curriculum Resources and you can see a variety of resources we will be using for this unit. Students will also be starting spelling, daily language, and non-fiction reading this week. Daily Language and spelling are a large part of their Language grade. Monday-Wednesday we do DL (daily language) together, and Thursday-Friday they do it independently for a grade. Their nonfiction reading will differ from week to week, it is due on Friday and will be part of their Reading Grade. Spelling is a little different this year. On Mondays students will be given a strip of letters. From the strip of letters they then create different words. They will have a special spot in their notebook to do this. On Tuesdays (at the end of the day) I will provide students a list of all the words that can be created and I will then put that on my website also. Students can come and get a list from my room, but I won’t be seeking any students out to assure that they have the list. We will also be setting AR goals and levels this week.

Spelling Letters for the week: a, e, e, o, l ,m n ,r s, t, w

ELA(Shultz)- Welcome to our first full week of school! I hope that your student has told you all about the "getting to know you" activities we completed last week and that he or she is excited about English/Language Arts (ELA) this year. The first week of school is the perfect time to dive in to a short research project, writer's notebooks, independent reading time, and a PRE-test on poetic devices! Our research project will begin with each student (or pair of students as needed) choosing a famous scientist or inventor from a group of books in our room. We will use these books, coupled with an internet resource to complete a biopoem about the chosen person. You can see the biopoem on my class website under Week 1.    www.mrsshultzsclasswebsite.weebly.com  Each student will receive his reader's and writer's notebook this week and we will discuss effective ways of journaling, taking class notes, writing down ideas, and other methods of writing throughout the year. Our first library visit is Monday, so we will move into our reading goals immediately. Finally, we will begin looking at figurative language next week, so I will give students a pre-test on poetic devices at the end of the week to determine what we need to review and learn new.

Our class will not begin our spelling program until the week of the 20th and I am really excited to get the kids sorting words and learning about word formation in a whole new way! No more cramming for Friday spelling tests on Thursday night! Please feel free to email me or contact me with concerns or even what your educational goals are for your student this year. Our classroom is all about differentiating instruction for individual students! Have a great week~

SCIENCE:  This week we will be working with the Scientific Method.  We are planning to do an EGG DROP activity on Friday and need students to bring materials from home to protect their egg, so please send any material your child wants to use before Friday.  Please do not buy any supplies for the egg drop.  Simply look for household items that could protect the egg.

Math: Students will be working with division, multiplication, and area over the next two weeks while with Mrs. Meurer. Students will be learning through centers and small group instruction. Both math classes will be piloting an online Math Program called "Khan Academy". This program allows students to work at his/her own pace and teachers can monitor progress and set individual goals along the way. We are launching into this program this week! Over the next two weeks while with Mr. Siders, students will be working on multiples, factors, perimeter, standard form and word form of decimals, and adding and subtracting decimals.

Welcome!
Getting ready to start the school year here pretty soon! It seems as though this summer has just flown away. I hope you kiddos get outside and enoy that sunshine while there's still time.

Don't forget Open House is Tuesday August 7th from 6-7p.m., I would love to see you all there. This is the time for parents to fill out all that important information we will need for the upcoming school year. I just mailed out letters to all my students today, so you should be receiving one in the mail sometime soon.

First day of school is August 9th (wow, that's close!).