Cats vs. Dogs

Parents,

In effort to encourage children to read at home I will now be sending home a Reading Log every Monday that must be completed AND signed by Friday.  I expect students to read at least one hour each week at home (ideally it would be about 30-40 minutes a night), however, I understand how busy schedules are. Once your child completes their required hour they can bring their form back to school and turn into me. There is an incentive to read more though. Both of my classes have been put into either the ‘Dog Team’ or the ‘Cat Team’. 

At the end of each week the total amount for each team will be tallied and I will let them know on the following Monday which team won for the previous week. Every child has to contribute at least 1 hour per week for their team, however, students can choose to read at home more to add more time to their side. Whichever team wins at the end of 1^st quarter will receive a special prize from Mrs. Sandusky. We will be keeping a chart of our time in our classroom.

In efforts to keep students honest, they must fill out the form as the example shows. Students MUST have the date, book read, pages, and times all listed with your signature next to it. I will also be checking at school to see what page they are on in their chapter books to keep the competition fair. Also, if for some reason your child does not bring back their form filled out, completed, AND signed they will be spending Fun Friday in Study Hall. Hopefully this will encourage students to be taking AR tests as well!

Why cats and dogs do you ask? Scholastic currently has a program called ‘Paws for Reading’ going on right now that inspires students to read in efforts to help donate books to students in need. For every 20 minutes that our students read a book is donated to a child in need through Scholastic and their literacy partners. So not only are our students getting to read great books, improve their comprehension and fluency, up their AR scores, but they are also learning how to help others. For more information check out www.scholastic.com/paws.

Thank you for your ongoing support,

Becky Sandusky

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!

September 10, 2012

5^th Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Sandusky’s Class

Important Dates:

·         9/11-9/12; Acuity Testing

·         9/14- Mid-quarter

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

ELA (Sandusky)- This week we have Acuity testing Tuesday and Wednesday. Please make sure your child is in attendance if at all possible. These tests give us results that help drive our instruction. We will be focusing on drawing conclusions and inferences this week in reading. This week we will also start DRA’s that tell each child’s instructional and independent reading level. We will not have spelling due to the 2 days of testing, and the additional testing of the DRA.
Memorial Library cards are coming home in today’s folder. They are orange index cards. It is very important that you fill these out (address, phone number, name, AND signature) and return them as soon as possible. We will be going on the 27^th, all card have to be in before this date as they have to be inputted into the computer system. Going over to the library will help students in an upcoming assignment and is very beneficial to them. If your child does not bring their card back they will stay at school with another teacher. Even if you have a family card, it is still necessary for your child to bring this back.

ELA(Shultz)- This week, we will start a new spelling focus--er, meaning person or thing that does something and re meaning back or again. We will be building on what we have already learned with this suffix and prefix. We will also be taking our first benchmark test in English/Language Arts. Encourage your student to do his or her very best, so that we have an accurate picture of what we excel in and what we need to review. We are continuing with our look at conjunctions and using connecting words like and, but, or, and neither...nor, to make our sentences more complex and interesting. All students are responsible for including the correct capitalization and end punctuation in their work now. Mid-quarter ends on Friday. All students should be at 40% of their goal at that time. The quarter is flying by and I am making connections almost daily with every student regarding his or her AR goal

 SCIENCE: We will continue working on Body Systems the rest of the week.  NO test this week.  I will give students an opportunity to re-test on Cells this Friday

Math: This week we are taking our first Benchmark Assessment. Students will have their Math Benchmark Assessment with Acuity on Wednesday, September 12th. It is VERY important that all students are at school this day, so we have scores for all students. It is much easier for a student to take the assessment the day we give it, rather than having to attempt to make it up and miss class time and instruction. We are going to still be working on writing numerical expressions and move into order of operations, Unit 1 of Buckle Down later this week. Grades will be coming home on Wednesday, September 19th. Please note that MATH GRADES are weighted for students in 5th grade. 70% of their math grade comes from Test Scores, and the remaining 30% will come from classwork and any homework students may have. We are already entering the last week of Mid-Quarters for First Quarter.  Time is already slipping away.

September 4th Newsletter

5^th Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Sandusky’s Class

Important Dates:

·         9/7-Early Out (Fall Festival)

·         9/14- Mid-quarter

Monday	Music 1 (No school)
Tuesday	Art
Wednesday	PE 1
Thursday	Music 2
Friday	Computers

ELA (Sandusky)- No spelling words this week! This week we will be finishing up with figurative language and compare and contrast. We will be focusing on pronouns and quotation marks for our writing strategies. PLEASE, PLEASE make sure your child is reading at home in the evenings. ELA teachers will soon be sending home a reading log that parents and students must fill out weekly and sent back to school. (Just giving you a heads up!) I generally don’t assign homework so that way students have more time in the evenings to read.

ELA(Shultz)- his week, we will continue to work with the spelling words and letters from our last two weeks. We are discussing the different ways that the “er” suffix works with words (to mean “more” and “someone or something that does something”). We have discussed the importance of appropriate capitalization in our writing—specifically when capitalizing one’s name or the word “I.” All students will be responsible for remembering these two instances in all of their writing, all of the time. We are continuing with our lessons on compare and contrast (ways things are similar and different) this week. Find fun ways at home to compare and contrast your days, pets, meals, anything you can think of! Once again, we always ask that your student reads at home each night. If you have a student reading a chapter book, this is an excellent way to get an extra 20 pages read during the week. Or for a picture book, it is a great way to review and to be ready to test the next day! I encourage students to take a book home each night. 

 SCIENCE: We will have a test over CELLS on Friday. Look for students to start bringing home study materials on Wednesday. We will spend Tuesday through Thursday investigating body systems and their functions. If you would like the study guide emailed to you, please send me a request at jrichards@stjschools.org

Math: This week we will start Unit 1 on Order of Operations.  Students completed the pre-assessment for Unit 1 Aug. 20th, this week will be the beginning of teacher led instruction for order of operations.  On Thursday, students will take a Post-Assessment over 2x2 multiplication, basic long division (1 digit divisors), and adding/subtracting decimals. Students have been working in class on these skills since the first week of school, and in prior grade levels