September 17th Newsletter

5^th Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Sandusky’s Class

Important Dates:

·         9/11-9/12; Acuity Testing

·         9/14- Mid-quarter

·         9/19- Grades go home

·         9/27- Memorial Library Visit

·         10/3- DARE starts

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

ELA (Sandusky)- This week we will be starting our Reading Groups and getting into a routine with those. Our reading groups will consist of about 35 minutes each day. Students get into groups of 4-5 read together and then complete their reader binders for the day. Their reader binder consists of 2 questions each day about their reading. It is their responsibility to complete this each and every day. Their Reader Binder will be a giant part of their 2^nd quarter reading grade. They work on this together as a group, talking about their answers and checking for comprehension. If a student is absent it is THEIR OWN responsibility to read what they missed and answer the questions themselves. Their group members are only responsible for telling them what pages they read while they were gone. This is a chance for your child to show responsibility and enjoy a book with his/her peers. I will be meeting with them once a week to check progress.
We will also be working on comparing and contrasting fictional texts, finishing DRA’s, writing to prompts in our journals, and writing an opinion essay about figurative language. If you have any questions about grades going out on 9/19, please email me at bsandusky@stjschools.org. Keep in mind that AR scores are factored into reading, so if your child’s grade is lower than you expected this could be a factor.
Spelling Words:
List 4
earthquakes
eat
use
user
heat
seat
take
shake
quake
skate
reuse
earth
eater
heater
reseat
retake
skater
shaker

ELA(Shultz)- Beginning, September 24th, Mrs. Shultz's classroom will be open for students from 7:20-7:50 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Students coming to her room at that time will need to have a referral from their classroom teacher. Reasons students may visit will be to work on the following: AR, completing assignments, typing practice, writing for the photography club, working on Reading Eggs or Study Island for additional practice in a subject area. Students may visit from any class for any subject--AS LONG AS THEY ARE REFERRED BY A TEACHER THAT WEEK. The referring teacher may send a note home to ensure that the student can come in early in the morning to work. I will not take students who are not on the list. Many students get to school early and those that are here, need to be ready to work so as not to distract the others. The list can change from day-to-day and week-to-week. If you would like your student to take advantage of this time for a particular reason, you can contact the subject area teacher or Mrs. Shultz at kshultz@stjschools.org, or by calling 265-2300 x4292.

ELA--This week in ELA we will not be introducing another set of spelling words, however you will be getting the take home spelling page in the red folder. Please encourage your student to cut apart these letters and form words with them. We are again, focusing on adding the suffix "er" to words to mean more and one who. We have been examining poetry and working on writing our opinions about it and we will continue to do this through this week, along with editing our writing. We would like to complete a short opinion paragraph on one of the poems we have read by Friday. Some students may complete this and have time to work on a digital presentation of their opinion. Others will be successful at writing and editing a paragraph that expresses their complete thoughts and uses complex sentences. We will all work to make digital presentations of our work throughout the year. This week will hopefully wrap up our first unit on Word Study and take us in to unit 2 which is Renaissance Thinking! 

 SCIENCE: This week we will finish our unit over Body Systems. We will take the Body Systems test on Thursday. Study guides will be given on Tuesday. If you would like the study guide emailed to you, please send a request to jrichards@stjschools.org. This test will be worth 100 points.

Math: This week students will be kicking off Order of Operations. PEMDAS will be our "moto" for the week!! Students completed their acuity test last week and we hope to have results to parents NEXT week!