It is incredibly hard to believe this week brings January to a close! On Friday, we will spend some time celebrating the 100th day of school with the Junior Kindergarten class. We hope you and your family will be able to come see the Middle School play, Annie, Jr., this weekend. Although we are excited to see the play this year, we have to admit we are even more excited to see next year’s play to include this current fifth grade class. There certainly is a lot of artistic, musical and theatrical talent within the class of 2027!

Mrs. Wimble has asked that we please remind all of our students that they need to wear appropriate athletic shoes and clothes on P.E. days (Monday & Wednesday for Mr. Barzditis homeroom, Wednesday & Friday for Mrs. McGehee’s homeroom). It is also important for all students with long hair to put their hair up. Thank you in advance for helping our students come to school prepared on all P.E. days.

Here is what’s going on in our core classes this week:

Language Arts: As we’ve been gearing up towards our small-group discussions with our Spinelli Reading Circles, the class has been reviewing effective skills for answering discussion questions fully and utilizing evidence from the text. By use of a handy acronym (RACE – Restate the question in your answer; Answer the question; Cite evidence from the text; Explain), the students practiced this approach in small groups with the myth of “Theseus and the Minotaur,” which resulted in a demonstrably thorough and excitable large-group discussion.

In addition to the Spinelli small-group discussions, the students have been preparing for their first vocabulary quizzes, which are coming up on Friday. Many of these words are incredibly useful and applicable, not only because they occur in the novels they’re reading, but because of how the students will be able to use them in their verbal and written expression. These quizzes will occur every two weeks, meaning the students will be responsible for roughly 10-15 new words by the time each quiz rolls around.

Math: This week in math students have been practicing addition and subtraction of fractions, especially involving regrouping, simplifying, and renaming. They were challenged to explain in either words or models, the math behind a strategy with regrouping of mixed numbers with subtraction that was shared with me by one of their peers. Many students worked hard to prove the mathematical reasoning behind the “trick” which worked every time. This discussion even brought about negative rational numbers, and the relationship between addition and subtraction of negative numbers. Students are also focusing more on word problems involving fractions this week. As we head into next week, our fifth graders will need to rely on their previous understanding of unit fractions and whole number multiplication to begin developing their understanding of multiplication of fractions.

History: This week in History, we’ve been continuing along with our 50 States Presentations. As the songs and presentations have gone by, the students have also been jotting notes based on the interesting facts they’ve learned, such as a state’s official animal, bodies of water, and famous individuals from that state.

Next week, we’ll shift away from US Geography and dive headfirst into the Industrial Revolution. Before we can get there, though, we’re going to finish up this unit with a final US States quiz, which we mentioned in last week’s blog. This final quiz will be Friday, and though your students won’t be responsible for knowing the capitals, they will have to identify all of the fifty states on a map. We know many of them have been studying hard for this final assessment, so we’re excited to see them put their knowledge to the test.

Science: In science, we will still be working on our garden project, but we have also begun our unit on health and the human body. Students have already begun to learn about the systems within the human body, but soon they will know the main organs of each system, as well as how they interact to keep our bodies functioning at it’s best.

We hope that this blog is helpful in keeping you up to date on what is going on in each of our academic classes. Please know that we welcome you to contact us should you have any questions or concerns. We would be more than happy to meet with you to discuss our goals and objectives for this year.

Have a great week,

Kimberly & Tim

Happy Short Week! We hope you all enjoyed the long weekend and are staying warm and healthy. Please know, there have been several students and staff out sick this week and last week. Please be sure you and your children are all getting plenty of rest, drinking lots of water, and washing hands often!

Language Arts: This week, we are moving onto our next novels–three different works by Jerry Spinelli: Stargirl, Maniac Magee, and Jake and Lily. Though we will often come together to discuss what’s happening in each novel, the students have been organized into small reading groups that will focus on their selected text for the next several weeks.

After previewing each of the books and discussing some inferred similarities between the three, they each began reading the first thirty pages or so. As we proceed through each novel, the students will study relevant vocabulary, meet with each other for small-group discussions, tackle comprehension checks, and interpret the text through a variety of activities and small projects.

We know they’ve been eager to begin their next novels, so, like the titular character of Maniac Magee, fifth grade is gonna hit the ground running with these ones.

Math: Building upon our work with equivalent fractions last week, our focus this week is on addition and subtraction of fractions and mixed numbers. Students must be able to quickly rename fractions so they have common denominators in many instances. Having fractions that “look” different but actually are equivalent is a tough concept to grasp for a lot of students. The use of models and number lines definitely helps to explain various forms of equivalent values. This concept has also been very important in understanding how to regroup in order to subtract mixed numbers. Our many discussions about decomposing numbers this year have served as a great foundation for being able to regroup. For example, 4 ¼ can be renamed as 3 + 1 + ¼, which can then be renamed as 3 + 4/4 + 1/4, and finally 3 + 5/4. The goal is to be able to work through all of that almost immediately in their heads, but it is important to show how 4 ¼ comes to be rewritten as 3 + 5/4.  We have also been using these skills to practice converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and vice versa.

History: As many of you likely saw this week, the students did EXCELLENTLY on their South/Southwest region quiz from last Friday. That brings the individual region work to a close, which means that next Friday, they will conclude our US Geography unit with a final quiz. Unlike the quizzes, the students will only be responsible for knowing the states and their location on the map.

Additionally, in the coming days, the students will be presenting their States Research Projects (which we’ve joked has been a “two-year project,” now). To add another element to these presentations, yesterday, we brainstormed a massive list of songs that made us think of specific states or the USA as a whole, whether because they directly reference the state(s) or because of the “feeling” they give us. Kimberly and I will sift through these suggestions and curate a final “playlist” that we’ll have in the background as the students present their states research. They had a lot of fun thinking about all the songs that reminded them of the United States, so seeing them present to the tunes of Frank Sinatra, Oklahoma!, and The Osbourne Brothers should be quite a sight to see.

Science: Mixed between our states and Martin Luther King, Jr. activities, our scrum teams have been talking about what roles they each play within their area of expertise. They will be researching activities which correlate to their group’s focus, and ultimately, will share the activities they choose with the rest of the class. It would definitely be nice to get a little warm blast to make going outside a little more appealing!

Have a great week!

Kimberly & Tim

Welcome Back! We hope everyone has had a wonderful break celebrating with family and friends. It is so hard to believe we are in a new decade, and that this fifth grade year is over half way over. 

There are some exciting events happening this month through our Enrichment program here at FA! Click here to find out more information about:

• Upcoming enrichment sessions include band, continued strings, knitting, magic, ballet, nutrition and cookie making. Registration closes for this session at noon on Thursday, so be sure to check out it soon!
• The monthly Parents’ Night Out is coming up on Friday. Drop off the kids at FA and enjoy an evening out in Fredericksburg! 
• February 8th there will be a dance for Lower School students to enjoy a night out with a special adult in their lives. Desserts, a craft, dancing, and a DJ will be provided!

Definitely also check out the great pictures and videos that have been uploaded for the month of December to our 2019-2020 Photos folder. December sure was a whirlwind of a month, with a heavy focus on performances of many types by our creative and talented students!

Language Arts: In our first school week of 2020, we will be focusing on persuasive writing. Though many of the students have written persuasively before, it’s an incredibly valuable skill to hone, and we’re going to take it to some new and challenging levels this week. So this week, we’ll be covering the core elements of this kind of writing (your stance on the topic; appealing to your audience; choosing your best points; etc) and looking at a number of examples, ranging from the persuasive texts they see everyday (such as commercials and ads) to brief, student-oriented essays.

Since the students will be gearing up to write their own persuasive essays, we’ll conclude this week with a brainstorming session where they’ll choose their own prompts to respond to next week. Having a strong, personal investment in what they’re writing about will vitally empower the students, allowing them to think of their most essential persuasive points and write a compelling, convincing argument.

Math: Our focus this week in math will be visualizing equivalent fractions through various models. We will decompose fractions into smaller unit fractions, and connect our knowledge of multiplication as repeated addition to fractional reasoning. Another very important concept to grasp is why we multiply (or divide in the case of simplifying) both the numerator and denominator by the same number. It is crucial for students to understand they must not write (or say) ” ¾ x 2 = 6/8″ (it would actually equal 6/4), but rather “¾ x 2/2 = 6/8″. Multiplying by a form of 1 proves the equivalency between ¾ and 6/8. While students may have heard of the identity property of multiplication before, it is new to them to think of 1 in an alternate form. As students gain familiarity with the use of fractions and decimals in problems they have previously solved with whole numbers, they need to use their strong number sense foundation we have been building all year and throughout previous years. By the end of the week, we also will be using the benchmark values of 0, ½, 1, 1 ½, and 2 to compare fractions and place them on number lines.

Science: This week, our six scrum teams will begin their work on our project to revamp the Playscape Garden in the spring. Students will find out who their teammates will be, as well as the topic they will focus on. Before the break, each student filled out a survey ranking the following topics from their top choice to their last: Planning & Design, Plants, Animals & Habitats, Health & Humans, Environmental Impacts, and Soil & Water. The focus this week will be on teambuilding and sharing their own background knowledge of their topic.

History: Continuing from where we left off, this week, we’re working through the Midwest states and capitals in our US Geography unit. On Monday, the students worked through stations to fill out their study guide, which they’ll use to prepare for their quiz on Friday. After this week, they’ll only have Southwest and West regions left (both of which we’ll tackle next week) before we pull it all together.

Have a wonderful week!

Kimberly & Tim