Feb. 9
Tomorrow is an early release day. Your child will be dismissed at 12:40.
In math we are working on measurement. Your child will need to measure in metric and customary units (to the nearest 1/8 inch). Please practice measuring and reading the ruler with your child at home. This tends to be a difficult skill. We will also be learning how to convert measurements within the same system. For example; inches to feet, miles to yards, gallons to quarts, millimeters to centimeters, kilometers to meters, etc. Currently we are reviewing perimeter and area while we measure in customary and metric. I have presented linear measurements (customary and metric). Tomorrow we will review volume. Later in the week and next week we will cover capacity and weight/mass. Next week we will work on customary conversions, then metric conversions.
Your child should be writing their rough draft. Final copies are due next Friday. Copy of the rubric is on my social studies page if your child has lost theirs. The rubric is very important and tells them how they will be graded. We begin video taping the week of Feb. 22.
Ch 14 test on Tuesday, Feb. 16.
January 21
Has your child told you about their Living Museum project? Each student chose their famous person to research and write a speech in 1st person. They will "become" the character and tell about "their" life. They received guiding questions and a rubric. The rubric should be used as a guide and checklist while they research and prepare their speech. Not every question on the "guiding" questions will be answered or appropriate for every famous person. The project will be worth three social studies grades as shown on the rubric. The speech/written paper will also be entered as a writing grade. The speech/final paper is due on Friday, February 19. We will video tape each speech the week of February 22. Even though costume (it can be quite easy - I don't expect or want rented elaborate costumes) and background are extra credit, it is HIGHLY encouraged to add interest to the presentation. We are excited to incorporate our green screen technology to help the kids include a background in their presentation. Note: don't plan a green costume if they are going to use technology to add a background.
We had a lesson in the library about appropriate research resources. Each student received a laminated research bookmark with wonderful internet resources along with usernames and passwords. These websites are linked on the library website under research resources. Your child should be using these websites and ones linked on my website, NOT doing a general search (such as Google or Yahoo). If they are not able to find appropriate information about their famous person, please let me know right away. Please help remind your child to properly cite their sources. Most kids want to wait and do it later... that will cause them quite a bit of grief later. Citing sources is so much easier now than it was when we were researching. Most of the research resources that are available on the library website have the source citation on the bottom of the article. The kids just need to copy and paste onto a bibliography page. Citing a book is easy by using the citation maker that is linked on my social studies tabs. All these items have been gone over with the students in the library lesson and in the classroom.
Your child should be working on this project at home. If you have a USB flash drive your child can use to save their work on at home and at school it would help them very much. They can email work back and forth, but that is a bit more difficult and time consuming from school. USB flash drives can be found nearly anywhere (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc) for about $10. Your child will use it frequently in 6th grade also.
Checkpoint on Wednesday, February 2. Guiding questions should be completed, information collected and ready to write speech.
If you have further question, ask your child and then ask me. If your child loses their rubric and/question, they can be found on my social studies page.
We will continue studying our American History. We are studying chapter 12, The Declaration of Independence. They will finish reading and note taking tomorrow. Most will have time to do some research tomorrow. Ch 12 test on Wednesday.
In math we have been working on probability. The kids are doing very well. We should finish up tomorrow, review on Monday, and have an assessment on Tuesday. We will be moving on to study measurement for a couple of weeks and then geometry. A released math TAKS test will be given the last week of February.
Spring individual and class pictures on Wednesday, January 27.
Science fair and math night on Friday, February 5.
Have a great week.
Your child will have the following homework on a weekly basis:
*Read 20 minutes daily for Ms. Brown's reading class
*Worksheet with approximately 8 science questions - due on Friday
*Worksheet with 5 daily math questions - due each day, sheet collected on Friday (must show work on attached piece of paper)
*10 spelling/vocabulary words. Worksheet due on Friday. Spelling/vocabulary test on Friday.
Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Kirstie Ginapp
464-5390