Upcoming Events:

• Tuesday October 3 - 5th grade leads Rosary at 9:00am
• Please remember to sign-up for conferences with your homeroom teacher ONLY
• Mrs. Anderson is still in need of a Junior Achievement representative and several more volunteers for Talking canvas for her classroom. Please email her directly if interested landerson@saintfrancisschool.org.
• Friday Oct. 6 - Picture re-takes

5th Grade Newsletter

October 2nd - October 6th

Did you never read in the Scriptures: ”The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…?” Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

Psalm 118:22 and Matthew 21:42-43

Special intention: Please continue to keep 5th grade student, Lily Calvert, in your prayers.

Religion –  We wrapped up or will be wrapping up our unit on Prayer/Apostles’ Creed.  We will begin our unit on The Parts of the Mass next week.  October is the month in which the Catholic Church honors the Rosary.  K-5 will be participating in weekly Rosary prayer services.  5th grade will lead the first Rosary prayer service on Tuesday October 3 at 9:00 a.m. Mark your calendars!  Our annual Saints Wax Museum will be held after our school mass on Wednesday November 1st.  More information to come.

Reading/Language Arts – We are continuing to work through our genre unit.  Following our genre unit, we will spend time learning about and practicing all of the comprehension strategies.  Conferencing and letter writing are going really well!  Many students are well on their way to their 40 books by the end of 5th grade!  Keep on reading!

Math – Thank you for reviewing your child’s Unit 1 Math Assessment and returning it signed with your child.  We have started Unit 2 which focuses on estimation and computational procedures. Please encourage continued practice of basic facts.

Social Studies - We have spent the week discussing the Geography of the US and learned how to get on our online textbook for Social Studies.  Students wrote down the specific login and passwords today and will be having a few assignments that will need to be completed online.  Please email me if they do not have access to a computer or the internet at home.  Next week we will be learning about American Indians, their land, ways of life, and dwellings they lived in.  Our study of Mapping skills continues the entire year with our Daily Oral Geography (D.O.G.) lessons.  Please make sure your student is reviewing this every Thursday night, as there is always a quiz on Friday over this information.

Language Arts – We have started a unit on The Sentence.  We learned about a complete sentence, sentence fragment, and run on sentence.  We also learned about the 4 types of sentences-declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory.  Next week we will learn about the subject/predicate of a sentence.  We also learned about Homographs and completed activities that deal with them.  Next week we will re-visit and work with synonyms and antonyms.  In Writer’s Workshop, we’ve been working on a new version of a fairy tale and developing poems about an animal/food combined creature.  Both of these activities stemmed from some excellent examples of children’s literature.  The Frog Prince Continued and The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs both by Jon Scieszka and Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky served as our mentor texts.  Next week will try writing an informational piece of writing using the mentor texts-Who Would Win? by Jerry Pallotta

Spelling – Our Spelling list next week will consist of words with the suffixes -ed, -er, and -ing.

Upcoming Events:

• Thursday Sept. 28 Missions Dress Down Day
• Friday Sept. 29 Grandparent/Grandfriend Day

5th Grade Newsletter

September 25-September 29

Religion – All three classes have been holding daily prayer services as the schedule allows.   We are continuing to work through our unit on Prayer.  We are taking time to focus on the Apostles’ Creed and using it to teach the students what we believe as a part of our Catholic faith.  This instruction will continue next week.

Reading- We are continuing our work with genre.  We are looking at each individual genre and discussing its characteristics and elements.  This unit will help the students determine which genre to place each of their 40 books as they read them. We have started conferencing and letter writing too!  Many students are well on their way to their 40 books by the end of 5th grade!  Keep on reading!  

Math – Your child will be bringing home their Unit 1 assessment on Monday for you to review and sign. We will begin Unit 2: Estimation and Computation.  I will begin testing on basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts next week. I will be providing feedback to your child if they need to complete additional study to master basic facts.

Science - We continued our study of the scientific method this week having interesting discussions on whether Skittles melt faster in hot or cold water.  The students loved our interactive experiment and finally had a chance to find the answer to that testable question.  Ask them about it.  We reviewed today for our Test over the scientific method that all 3 classes will have on Monday.  STUDY!!!

Social Studies - Although we have been spending most of our time on science, we are still taking the first 10 minutes of class to study our map skills.  We have discussed latitude, longitude, and all four hemispheres.  Students took their D.O.G. quizzes today and will get them back on Monday to be signed.  This will be the process throughout the school year so be asking your students to see their quizzes.  

Language Arts – We spent this week working on antonyms.  We also spent time reading re-written and different versions of classic fairy tales.  We read aloud the book The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs.  We discussed point of view in stories.  Students then developed a list of ideas in which a new point of view is used in a well known fairy tale.  After individual and small group brainstorming,  students began drafting a piece of writing stemming from one of these fairy tale ideas.  We will continue with this process next week.  We will also begin a unit on The Sentence.

Spelling –  Our Spelling list next week will contain the prefixes re-, pre-, de- and time will be spent looking at homographs.

5th Grade Newsletter

September 19-23

Religion – All three classes have been holding daily prayer services following the resource Children’s Daily Prayer.  The Reading or Gospel for the day is read aloud, prayer intentions are stated and a quiet reflection time is observed.  This is a beautiful way to begin our Religion classes each day.   We have also started and will continue with our first unit of the school year on prayer. The kids have been learning about different forms of prayer. Next week we will continue to look at the Apostles Creed, one of the prayers that 5th graders are required to memorize. We will be discussing the meaning behind the Apostles Creed. This unit will end with a short quiz over forms of prayer discussed in class.  The quiz date is yet to be determined.

Reading – We finished reading the whole class book, Frindle, and have been using this as our example and expectation for reading this year. We are using this book to model how our reading program will work with the students as independent readers.  We will begin letter writing and conferencing with the students about their reading choices next week.  We will also begin a short unit on reading genres.

Math – We have continued unit 1 in our Everyday Mathematics program. Most nights, your child will be bringing home a study link. They will need to complete the study link as homework.  Please assist your child as needed. The parent letter serves as a reference for you as you work with your child.  We will have our Unit 1 test on Thursday, September 21 and Friday, September 22.  They will be bringing home their red spirals, a unit review, and their daily studylinks to study.    

Science - Your student did an awesome job following directions to get their interactive student notebooks setup for science.  We are asking questions, forming hypotheses, creating experiments, observing, analyzing data, and communicating results this week and next while doing some FUN experiments.  Ask your student about our teamwork activity and check out our photos on the 5th grade Blog here.  

Language Arts – We spent this week learning about punctuation and synonyms.   We also finished up brainstorming ideas for writing and forms of writing for our Writer’s Notebook.  Following our brainstorming, we completed a “Combo” piece of writing.  Ask your child to share it with you.  Next week, we will learn about antonyms and create many more pieces of writing.  The punctuation test will be on Monday.  Your child has been told to bring home his/her notes to study for this test.

Spelling –  Our Spelling list next week will consist of words that contain the vowel blends ou, aw, au, ow

TEAMWORK Science FUN!

5th Grade Newsletter

September 11-15, 2017

(Peter asked Jesus,) “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?  As many as seven times?” Matthew 18:21

Religion – All three classes have been holding daily prayer services following the resource Children’s Daily Prayer.  The Reading or Gospel for the day is read aloud, prayer intentions are stated and a quiet reflection time is observed.  This is a beautiful way to begin our Religion classes each day.  We will attend Adoration on Tuesday the 12th, and we will continue to attend Adoration every second Tuesday of the month.  We started to discuss the fruits of the spirit using our planner theme.  We will continue after those lessons with our first unit of the school year on prayer.

Reading – We started reading the novel, Frindle. We are using this book to model how our reading program will work with the students as independent readers.  We will begin mini lessons on genre next week.  We will also begin letter writing and conferencing with the students as well.

Math – We are continuing Unit 1 in Math.  As stated last week, your child will be bringing home a study link most nights. They will need to complete the study link as homework and check it against the answers published in the family letter. They have been instructed how to do this.  It is my hope that I can save time in math class reading the answers and designate that time to answering any questions and reviewing.  Please assist your child as needed. The parent letter servers as a reference for you as you work with your child. Please remind your child to brush up on those math facts.  Assessments will be given next week on basic math fact recall. Thank you for your support!    

Social Studies – Our focus this past week has been dedicated to the events of September 11th.  I am so proud of all your children for listening and discussing these events with such maturity.  So many thought provoking questions and discussion came from viewing videos and photographs from 9/11.  

Science - We will get going with science next week discussing the Scientific Method.  

Language Arts – We spent this week discussing how to come up with ideas for writing.  Ideas start small and grow!  We practiced writing a piece in which a small idea was given and the students made it grow!  We also completed on our first week of DLR (Daily Language Review) and Word A Day. Next week, we will begin increasing our writing stamina as well as cover a unit on punctuation.  

Spelling – We will took our first Spelling test. The format of the first test was a bit different than what the students are typically used to.  We will continue to test on Spelling in a variety of formats (including writing the words as traditionally done).

Spelling will also consist of daily mini lessons along with homework on some days.

Next week’s spelling list will include words with the prefixes un- and dis- .

Welcome to our Blog.  We are so excited to get this year rolling.  All happenings can be found on our iFive Blog.  We update regularly so be sure to check our site weekly.  All important info will be posted to our blog, be sure to view every week to see what's going on in 5th grade.

• Monday September 4 - No School
• Tuesday September 5 - Spirit Wear, students may wear St Francis or Dowling shirts to show school spirit with Dress code bottoms. 
• Friday September 8 - "Show your Colors" Support your favorite team by wearing their team colors with dress code bottoms. 
• Please return the pink Parent form to your child's homeroom teacher as soon as you can.