March 4th Newsletter

5th Grade Newsletter
March 4th, 2014

Upcoming Dates:

• March 4- McTeacher Night 4-8 p.m.
• March 13-Skate Night
• March 14- ALL AR GOALS DUE End of Quarter
• DARE field trip postponed due to scheduling conflict. More information to come as available.
• March 20- Music Program
• March 27-28- Make Up Days-School WILL BE IN SESSION

Parents:

• 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.
• 50 state tests are now being made up during recess time for those who did not label with 100% accuracy in the past three weeks.
• A new behavior structure has been implemented in 5th grade (it’s been used in the past and has good results), it’s called the ‘Clipboard’. The clipboard will last for two weeks, if a child is ‘clipboarded’ it is marked on a spreadsheet. On the 5th clipboard students lose their Fun Friday. Fun Friday will take place every other week. If a student continues to misbehave after the 5th clipboard they will more than likely be assigned an after school detention.

MATH:

Mr. Siders - Students have been working on adding unlike fractions (different denominators) and reducing their answer.  This is a very hard concept and kids have been doing very well.  We will start, the middle of this week, preparing for our next benchmark assessment.  Students will also be taking their 3rd quarter STAR Math test this week.

Ms. Blankenship - We finished our unit on fractions today, taking our end of unit test. We will be working on probability and data Thursday and Friday. We will STAR test on Friday. Benchmark testing begins next week.

Mrs. Watson- We will be working on algebra this week, exploring numerical expressions and variables. We will also be working on mean, median, and mode. Finally, students should be practicing their multiplication facts and the steps to  long division.n b

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 80% of their AR goal in order to stay on track to reach their goal. Dare essays have been written and completed. I will be grading them this week so I can return them to homeroom teachers.  The homeroom teacher will be selecting 5 of the best essays for selection of the essay winners. We will be reviewing all language skills in the next 2 weeks.  We will also practice the reading skills of problem and solution and compare and contrast for next week’s benchmark test.  We will finish our read aloud this week,  and the students will be testing on the book for a grade.  Don’t forget that AR goals will need to be completed by next Thursday, March 13. 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:This week we are working on Point of View (W 5.1). Once students have an understanding we will be moving on to Unit 4. Reading Logs due Friday. All late work for this quarter is due on Wednesday the 12th, anything after As always feel free to contact me at: bsandusky@stjschools.org, or 573-265-2300 ext: 4294

Engelbrecht: Reading logs are due on Monday, students need to read two hours at home and have a parent sign the log. If reading logs are not turned in before or on Monday, students will receive a mark on the clipboard for not turning in an assignment. We are starting Unit 4 (Civil War) this week.  We will be reading If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War and You Wouldn’t Want to be a Civil War Soldier .  Students will be identifying types of conflict in the story, point of view, and comparing and contrasting fictional and informational texts. We will also be reviewing language skills for the next  couple of weeks in preparation for our upcoming benchmark test.If you need anything or have any questions please email me at lengelbrecht@stjschools.org or 573-265-2300 ext: 4293

SCIENCE:
Mr. Siders - We will continue to work on our Solar System unit.  We are talking about the objects in our solar system including the sun, planets and moons.  We will also be talking about the moon phases as well as the length of time it takes the earth and moon to rotate and revolve/orbit.

Students have begun working on a Solar System Travel flyer.  They have been assigned an object in our solar system to be researching.  They will then be taking those facts and “spinning” them in a persuasive way as to why someone should visit that planet/moon/star (if it were possible to actually do so).  We have discussed that it would be impossible to visit many of the planets (or the sun) for various reasons but this project gives the students a way to be creative about presenting their planet’s facts.

Week 4

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