5th Grade Newsletter

December 12th-16th

Religion –Our 25 Days of Christ is well underway.  We are using this theme to learn about 25 major events in Christ’s life.  We are learning about these events through scripture, art, videos, and individual reflection.  Please feel free to visit this website for more information.  http://25daysofchrist.com/pages/the-25-days-new-testament-edition

We will continue with these lessons through Christmas.  The remaining prayer services for Advent will be held on Dec. 16 at 8:40 (5th grade leads), and Tues. Dec 20 at 2:50.

Reading/Language Arts – We have taken a break from letter writing and conferencing to engage in a class book-A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  We have read the first couple of staves (chapters ), been introduced to Vocabulary.com to assist in the more difficult vocabulary in this book, and we’ve discussed plot and character analysis as well.  This will be able to count as one of the 40 books students need to read by the end of the school year.  We are also still offer independent reading time so that the students can continue working on their 40 books!

Math – Your child will be bringing their Unit 3 Written test and Open Response tests on Monday.  We are starting Unit 4: Division next.  

Science - We have officially moved out of science and will pick that up after Christmas.  

Social Studies - Tuesday we began Road Tripping through Iowa History.  Students will be researching historical facts and creating an Iowa History Project all their own!  Information will be coming home, ask your child about it!

Language Arts – We continue to work on nouns.  I anticipate the final noun test to be held on Wednesday December 14th.  We’ve practiced the art of informative writing using kangaroos as a topic as well as Pearl Harbor as a topic.  Next week our informative writing practice will have a Christmas twist!  These practice pieces are all in preparation for an informative paper in January to be written about MLK (his life and legacy).  The paper in January will be a graded piece.

Spelling – Spelling words next week will consist of homophones.  Homophones are words that sound alike, but have different meanings and spellings.  Students will really need to depend on context clues to ensure the correct spellings of the words.