Ms. Alley's 5th Grade: Newsletter 2-5-12

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!!! I hope you enjoyed the game.

We had a FANTASTIC Catholic School’s Week!

Our Spelling Bee Winners Are:

1. Luke

2. AJ

3. Kevin

Great job, boys!!!!

The Week Ahead:

Religion: We will begin unit 10

English: We have been completing English lessons over grammar and mechanics. We will continue to work through that unit. We will also be starting a new story that integrates with our classroom novel, The Sign of the Beaver. The kids are writing, 5th Grade vs. Wild; a survival story that takes place in the wilderness.

Math: We will continue to work on chapter 7. This week, we will be focusing on the addition and subtraction of negative numbers. We will be completing our SMJ and also be doing a lot of extra practice. This is always a tricky area for my fifth graders. We will finish up chapter 7 this week, but we won’t be testing on this chapter until the following week.

Vocabulary: The kids will be tested over unit 11 on Friday.

Reading: I assigned the February book report on Tuesday. The kids have the rubric in their binder. This month, the kids will be completing a story board over a realistic fiction book. They must use the correct paper from my classroom. They know where the paper is at and was told that they can bring it home whenever they are ready to start their book report.

We will keep reading Sign of the Beaver and completing activities in their Reading Logs.

The kids will need 20 AR points for the third quarter. Help me keep them on track.

Social Studies: We finished chapter 6 last week. We will start chapter 7, The Southern Colonies. The kids will be taking Cloze notes and will be answering the comprehension questions and the H&P worksheets.

Science: We are going to start our new science unit, Work and Simple Machines. We will be working out of our science text and doing experiments to learn about energy, force, friction, and work. We will work on this for three weeks and then we will test. After that, we start learning about simple machines. This is so fun because they get to build different simple machines in class

Table Talk Questions:

1. Make up some math questions for your child so that they can work on adding and subtracting negative numbers. You can make up questions dealing with money and temperature. For example, “It was 13 degrees outside this afternoon, at night, the temperature dropped 20 degrees. What was the temperature at night?”

Have a spelling bee at home!

3. Talk with your child about their survival story to help them brainstorm some ideas!

Have a great week!

-Ms. Alley

We did an AWESOME experiment last week. I'm sure your child told you all about the egg! We put an egg in vinegar. The outer hard shell dissolved, and the inner soft shell was all that was left. The kids were able to observe the inner protection of the egg. The kids then asked me to pop it.... We didn't know what to expect, but it was REALLY COOL! Here are some pictures of the egg.