December 19, 2008

 

Dear Families,

Happy holidays!  Vacation is here so I hope you enjoy these next couple of weeks with family and friends.  Thank you so much for all of the generous gifts!  They were not necessary and were very thoughtful of you. We have had a great 2008 here in room 17 and I look forward to an exciting and challenging 2009.  We have almost reached the halfway mark in 5^th grade so I hope to make the rest of the year memorable for all.  See you next year!

 

Goodbye & Congratulations!

         Today we said goodbye to Ken with a class-created book and a party.  It was bittersweet since we are excited for him, but we will also miss him a lot.  He will be moving to Boston over the break and we wish him the best of luck there.  (We are a little bit envious that he will be learning about U.S. History in Boston!)

 

Science

This week, students took the final Water Planet test after lots of review. The next science unit will be on Mixtures and Solutions, a basic chemistry unit filled with lots of fun experiments and will begin immediately after the break.

 

Geography

Everyone did a great job on the District Geography Test as well as the 50 State Test.  All the hard work and extra studying paid off. After the break, we will be creating our own continents and using all of the knowledge we now have about geographical features to make diverse continents. 

 

Book Project

The non-fiction book project collages came in this week and look amazing.  Students displayed their passion for their topics with vibrant pictures and tidbits they shared with us.  Oral presentations are improving with each project as students have learned to project their voices, face their audience and engage everyone from the start with a catchy introduction.

Students also brought in extra copies of the written portion of their book projects this week.  We will be using those to write five-paragraph essays in January.

 

 

 

 Literature

We are finishing up The Sign of the Beaver, and are anxious to see if Matt ends up living alone in the wilderness.  After the break, we will be starting a project called ÒAlone in the WildernessÓ, in which we will determine what we will need to survive for 30 days.  We will also be creating journal entries to chronicle our experiences in the wilderness.

 

Math

In math, we are continuing to work on multiplication.  We have been reviewing all of the methods we have learned so far and have also learned how to use Clustering to solve difficult multiplication. Ask your child about cluster problems.  Now the algorithm is becoming clearer and more concrete for the students. We have also started working on properties of multiplication and order of operations. This can be confusing for some students. Therefore we will be doing some practice with this concept again in January.

 

 

 

 

Reminders

á      Mon. 1/5 School Resumes

á      Wed. 1/7 Choose 3 possible people for Wax Museum

á      Tues. 1/13 Multiplication Test (tentative date)

á      Tues. 1/13 Wax Museum Book Approval

á      Mon. 1/19 No School (Martin Luther King holiday)

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Judy Chiang