5th Grade Newsletter

December 19th-21st

Religion –Our 25 Days of Christ is still 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 service for Advent will be on 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 offering independent reading time so that the students can continue working on their 40 books!  When we return from break, we will finish up A Christmas Carol and then move into a unit on MLK.  We will read  various books and articles about MLK and reinforce a number of comprehension strategies during this unit.  There will still be time for independent reading to reach that 40 book mark at the end of the year!

Math –  We continue to work on Division concepts.  Coming soon we will also be interpreting remainders in story problems.      

Social Studies - We have started our unit on Iowa History this week and will continue next week.  Students have chosen the manner in which they have decided to present their information; google slide, book, or a play presentation of their information.  We also spent time practicing our geographic knowledge with the geographic Bee.  Students completed this today and some students have moved on to the next written round that will be given by Mrs. Larson Monday after school.  STUDENTS know who they are.  We will start preparing for BizTown when we return from Christmas break.

Language Arts – We completed our unit on Nouns.  I hope to have the assessments corrected before break.  We’ll complete a couple week of Daily Language Review in January and then begin work on a Verb unit. We’ve spent the week working on our 3rd round of informative writing.  The students had to choose a location for Santa to vacation on Dec. 26 or a gift (product) to purchase for Santa.  Research had to be completed on a location or product to complete the written piece.  We also discussed how to choose reputable sources and how to cite our sources to avoid plagiarism.  We probably won’t get these finished before break but we’ll complete them when we return after break. We will then work on an informative paper in January to be written about MLK (his life and legacy).  The paper in January will be a graded piece.

Spelling – There will not be a spelling test next week due to the short week.  Our next spelling test will be the week of January 9th.  It will consist of words