February 10, 2014

5th Grade Newsletter
February 10th , 2014

Upcoming Dates:

• February 12th; DARE Review with Officer Jones
• February 18- 5th Grade Science Night (Rescheduled)
• March 11th- Spelling Bee
• March 13- ALL AR GOALS DUE
• March 14- DARE Field Trip

Parents:

• If school is canceled, Parent Teacher Conferences will be rescheduled for another time.
• Students will be going outside for recess unless the temperature is 20 degrees or below. Please encourage your child to dress weather appropriate, for they will be going out unless there is a doctor’s note.
• Science Packets will be covering Weather and the Water Cycle this week, they are due on Friday, February 14th. (If students are going to music auditions in the mornings, they are responsible for making this up at a time outside of class.)
• Students will be taking their 50 state test on Friday this week. This is week 2 out of 3 in which they will be able to test in provided classtime.

Homework: We have finished with the sections of the United States. The next three weeks we are going to work on labeling all of the states. Once a student has successfully labeled all the states they do not have to take the test.  We will be giving tests on Friday.

MATH:

Mr. Siders - We will continue working through our unit on fractions.  This week we will be working on finding common factors and greatest common factors and reducing/simplifying fractions into simplest form.  

Students have been doing amazing on taking a fraction (like 3/28) and turning it into a decimal and a percent.  There are so many real world applications for this that I encourage you to practice this with your students.  Examples:  February 3/28 (3rd out of 28 days) to find the decimal and percent we are through the month.  34/365 (days in the year), etc….  

Ms. Blankenship - We are continuing our unit on fractions. Last week we covered converting improper fractions to mixed fractions as well as mixed to improper. The students did so well! You will see their quiz score during parent teacher conferences.
       This week we are focusing on converting decimals to percents, percents to decimals, decimals to fractions, percents to fractions, and fractions to decimals. We will also be working on finding the greatest common factor of two numbers which will lead into reducing fractions.

Mrs. Watson- Students will be learning about long division with 2 digit divisors. We will also be covering greatest common factor, number patterns, line graphs, and probability. Students will have a quiz over equivalent representations on Thursday, February 13th. Homework will be due on Thursday as well. Please be expecting a call or note home to reschedule your parent-teacher conference early this week.

If you have questions or concerns please email your student’s math teacher: nsiders@stjschools.org, bblankenship@stjschools.org, or swatson@stjschools.org. You can also visit the class web pages http://stjschools.org/fifth-grade/ for games and other sites to help review.

ELA: Mrs. Kemnitzer and Mrs. Shultz: Mondays are our library days. Please help your student remember any books from home he or she has through the week so that we can have new books to read. Students should be reading at home as often as possible. Practice makes perfect! Students should be at about 44% of their AR goal in order to stay on track to reach their goal. Students will be bringing home rescheduled parent teacher conference forms today (only those that had their conference scheduled with Mrs. Kemnnitzer). In nonfiction reading, we are discussing the main idea and details of a passage. This is a skill of focus for both nonfiction and fiction reading. Please remember, if you ever have questions or would like to contact Mrs. Kemnitzer or Mrs. Shultz you can do so by writing a note in the red folder, calling us at 265-2300 x4292 or emailing dkemnitzer@stjschools.org and kshultz@stjschools.org.

Sandusky: Reading Logs this week will be due on Friday.We will be studying sentence structure (L5.3), and taking a post test on Tuesday. The only way to practice sentence structure is to test out different ways to combine and rewrite sentences. We will be doing a lot of Kagan activities with this standard so students can see how one sentence can be written in multiple ways, and still be right! Students are still blogging on their Book Club books (historical fiction), and answering text feature questions with their groups. Small groups are being pulled from Benchmark Results to help students in their area of need. Students will be introduced to RI 5.1, which is inferencing in nonfiction texts. Parent teacher conferences are being rescheduled (I’m contacting those who have a scheduled time by note or phone call), if you would like to contact me for a new time: bsandusky@stjschools.org, or 573-265-2300 ext: 4294

Engelbrecht: In Language this week we are finishing comma rules we will post test on Tuesday.  We just ran out of time last week to post test. We will be working on sentence structure. Reading logs will be due on Monday, students need to read two hours at home and have a parent sign the log. Reading logs are worth five point every week.  We will also be reading Folk Stories and discussing the theme inferences, and character traits.  If you need anything or have any questions please email me at lengelbrecht@stjschools.org.

SCIENCE:
Mr. Siders - Weather and the Water Cycle tests will be going home at parent teacher conferences.  Students did great on the unit and learned a lot of great things.  We will begin our next science unit next week.

Ms. Blankenship - This week we will be continuing our unit over Weather and the Water Cycle.

Mrs. Watson- We will be continuing our unit on Weather and the Water Cycle and focusing on Climate.

Week 1

	PE 1	Art	Music1	PE 2	Computers	Music 2
Monday	Watson	Blankenship	Siders	Shultz	Sandusky	Engelbrecht
Tuesday	Blankenship	Siders	Shultz	Sandusky	Engelbrecht	Watson
Wednesday	Siders	Shultz	Sandusky	Engelbrecht	Watson	Blankenship
Thursday	Shultz	Sandusky	Engelbrecht	Watson	Blankenship	Siders
Friday	Sandusky	Engelbrecht	Watson	Blankenship	Siders	Shultz