The countdown is on for your children to finish out 2019. There is a lot of excitement in the air, but also lots to do in the next week. Please be sure to check the Upcoming Events portion of this page (to the right) for important dates!

Also, please note that Beginning Band starts for 5th grade students in January. You can find out more and register for band and many other wonderful after school enrichment programs for the next session here. 

Reading: This week, we have finally been dealing with the concept of irony and how it applies to the stories we’ve been reading and our own writing. Specifically, we’ve been covering three main types: verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony. After having an overview lesson of all three yesterday, we spent today practicing our ability to recognize ironic situations and explain how they know which thread of irony it is. Throughout the rest of the week, we’ll spend some time reading and discussing O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” (a holiday-inspired short story that’s infamously ironic), and apply our skills to the whole of Holes (which, as we’ve mentioned before, is a story rife with irony).

Finally, we’ll conclude with a viewing of Disney’s Holes, the 2003 adaptation of Louis Sachar’s novel. The film is rated PG, so you should expect to receive a permission slip from your student tonight. If you are comfortable with your student watching the film, then please have them return the signed slip as soon as possible.

Math: This week in math we are shifting gears to fraction foundations. This will help as we begin to understand the relationship and equivalencies between fractions and decimals. Students have been using “tape diagrams” to show the decomposition of fractions into unit fractions. It is difficult for many students to grasp the fact that decimals and fractions can be written in several equivalent ways, and that they occupy the same position a number line. For this reason, we will spend several weeks of class moving between fractions and decimals in order to make more sense of this abstract concept. As we work through these next units, I highly encourage you to talk with your children about fractions and decimals as they relate to money. This helps them make an abstract concept become more concrete. For example, pointing out that 1/2 of a dollar is the same as $0.50 whether that is in the form of 5 dimes (tenths of a dollar), or 50 pennies (hundredths of a dollar). Another helpful discussion is how 1/4 of a dollar is the same as $0.25 or 2/10 and 5/100.

History: This week, your students will be working their way through the Southeast Region of the US, which will culminate with another State/Capital quiz on Friday. As they prepare in class and at home, they will also be finishing up their first individual State Project (which they began last week) and move onto researching their second state. Though it doesn’t appear that we’ll make it through each of the US regions before Holiday Break, we’ll pick right back up with our remaining states in January.

Science: As we continue our planning for our garden project, we have been discussing some main areas that will need to be studied and addressed. A few of these topics are planning and plantings, soil composition, and environmental impacts. In order to simulate an engineering type project management system, students groups will be using “scrum teams” in order to become experts within their assigned topic area, and will need to use their knowledge to explain their portion of the project to the other teams. Teams will then need to work together to decide on each next course of action for the good of the greater project.