Reminders
- No School Monday - Labor Day
- E-MAILS - You should have received an email from your homeroom teacher, please check and reply to them to ensure you are on the correct email group.
- LATE-SLIPS - Students will begin receiving late-slips for late work and referrals for behavior and dress code violations when we return next week. Please check the handbook for these guidelines.
- SPIRIT WEAR - this means dress code bottoms with a SFA or Dowling Catholic t-shirt.
- BAND @ 8:00am. Use main school doors and go to band room. No need for instruments, only band music unless your child has a Tuesday lesson.
- Mass @ 8:45 - Mrs. Alsin's class will lead us.
Upcoming Events
- Alsin Class Mass - September 5
- Schaffer Class Mass - September 12
- Anderson Class Mass - September 19
5th Grade Newsletter
September 3-7, 2018
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 our first unit of the school year-prayer. We’ve discussed types of prayers, why we pray and prayer gestures. Next week we will take a closer look at The Apostles’ Creed and discuss how it states what we as Catholics believe.
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. Please ask your child how s/he is doing on their 40 book challenge!
Math – We are continuing Unit 1 in Math. 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 serves 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 week has been on the ins and outs of our Classroom Economy. Students will earn, lose, and spend money in our classrooms. All 3 sections of 5th grade participate in this system and use it throughout the entire year. These are basic skills that apply to our real world economy. Applying for jobs and filling out applications will continue each week. Ask your child about this.
Today we discussed “What we Know” about the events of 9/11/01 and how they have shaped our Nation. We will continue this topic next week as we celebrate the 17th Anniversary of this attack. We will focus on the “Rebuilding” of our country after such tragic loss and not the “why”. I am always so proud of how students listen and discuss these events with such maturity.
Science - We will get going with science in a few weeks 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 did some brainstorming actitivies and created pieces of writing from these activities as well. We also began our Word A Day lessons. Each day a vocabulary word is introduced and discussed. A short assessment will be given on Fridays over the words. We took our first assessment today. This will continue weekly. Next week, we will begin increasing our writing stamina with different writing topics as well as cover a unit on punctuation.
Spelling – We 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-
