Trimester 2 started this week. Please look for an email from Mrs. Estes Friday afternoon regarding how to access to your child’s report card. In fifth grade, report cards include letter grades and are posted on Veracross. They can be printed or saved as a PDF for your records.
Wow! This year is really flying by; I wish it would slow down! Surely I am not the only one thinking this! Right?
Please read below to hear what has been going on in our classes this week.
Reading: In addition to reading up to Chapter 40 in Holes (we’re in the final stretch!), we’ve been focusing on some of our writing and grammar work this week. Specifically, the students have been reviewing compound sentences, as well as learning to identify coordinating and subordinate conjunctions. Though some of this will feel rather familiar to your students, being able to rely on acronyms like FANBOYS (for coordinating) and WASABI U (for subordinate) will make conjunctions far easier to remember and use in their own writing. We’ll wrap up our work with these concepts this week and use what we’ve practiced in a way that connects back to our reading in Holes.
The other big note to be aware of is that your students will be showing you their second Holes Reading Quiz from last week. This quiz had a lot more parts involved than the first (such as key vocabulary, themes, and symbolism), but by and large, the students did remarkably well with each of the new components. You should expect your student to show you the quiz and ask for your signature (along with their agendas and reading logs, of course). We’ll have one more Reading Quiz with the final chapters of Holes, but based on what I’ve seen with these, then they’ll be more than ready to dig up the answers.
Math: This week in math we have been moving from evaluating order of operation problems to writing them. Earlier in the year several students were questioning whether or not math is a language. This week we are proving that it is by translating words into numerical and algebraic expressions. This requires thinking through what is actually being asked, and in what order the symbols and numbers need to be placed. We are discovering the importance of parentheses, and learning that subtraction and division are not commutative. The properties we are discussing this week (commutative, associative, distributive) play a big role in algebra. When we are only dealing with numbers properties like the commutative property of addition basically just make expressions easier to evaluate. However, in algebra, properties allow us to simplify expressions and solve equations. Our class discussions have even led us to think about negative numbers, as well as the point of math or history beyond memorizing dates or procedures.
Science: As we continue our unit on the scientific method, we have been focusing on the two different types of data (qualitative vs. quantitative), as well as the difference between observations, inferences, and opinions. We will close out the week identifying independent and dependent variables within an experiment, and using them to write a clear hypothesis. We will most likely have our first science quiz of the year on Tuesday, so please keep an eye on your child’s agenda for confirmation.
Have a great rest of the week and stay warm!
Kimberly & Tim