Dear fifth grade parents,
Mrs. Innis, our swim coordinator, asks that we focus on getting to the bus as early as possible on Wednesday mornings. The children need to eat a larger breakfast, as there is no time to snack at school. Also, if you transport your child, please be here by 9AM to catch the bus.
In meeting this week I will be discussing the following items that I wanted to share with you in hopes of preventing future problems. As we deal with the effects of the media and pop culture on an elementary playground the children need to be aware of a couple of things. The lyrics of songs that they listen to on the radio may not be appropriate to sing (or say) at school. It is important to know that children of the opposite gender may not consider the words respectful as they are spoken to them. Also, children who are using foul language or swearing with friends or on the telephone will find that we adults do not consider this respectful.
What we Plan for the Week
History
The State of Maine Learning Results state that fifth graders will understand and identify the geographical, economic, and political factors that led to the discovery of the Americas. I will use the World Series to explain the meaning of these terms to the children. We will then observe a video of the exploration of North America and one about the Vikings to identify the factors affecting the explorers. The children will practice taking notes in this process.
Mrs. Ratigan’s Math
We will start the week collecting data about the number of letters in our first name. We will use this information to create a line plot of the data. We will then learn the language of line plots: mean, median, mode, outliers, and range. On Monday we will focus on the process of subtraction. We will discuss the meaning of the term; difference and then we will study the process of subtraction. We will also practice addition as we learn how to tern expanded form into standard form of numbers. The end of the week will find us moving into multiplication clusters.
Reading
As we finish our read aloud story” Mrs. Fish and the Dump Queen” we will learn what the term theme means in relation to a book. We will discuss how to support our belief about the lessons about life that the author is teaching us.
The strategy of inference will be introduced. Children will be choosing books that they want to read for our first book club.
Writing
We will be learning about various leads to hook readers into reading our personal narratives. We will learn the process of revision (re seeing) as we add leads to our seed stories.
Leaving the personal narrative form of writing, we will move into expository writing, which tells or explains.