WOW! What a beautiful day! We hope you were able to get outside a little to enjoy it. It seems as though winter has just completely passed us by this year. 

Here is a look at what we are doing in our core classes this week:

Language Arts: This week, we’re picking up where we left off with our Spinelli novel work from last week. Rather than push onwards to the next set of chapters, we’ll be meeting in our reading groups to discuss the content of last week’s reading, practice using RACE to work through our Comp Q, and perform some comprehensive character sketches for each book’s protagonist(s). Since we’re working with the same chapters from last week, there will not be a vocabulary quiz this week, but students should certainly expect one next Friday.

We’ve also been practicing effective revision and peer editing techniques to channel towards the final drafts of their D.A.R.E. essays, which are due by the end of the day this Friday. Today, after looking for areas of concern in their own drafts, the students focused their editing and revising skills towards another student’s draft. This allows them to know how an outside audience is receiving their writing while also having the opportunity to help each other along in their writing process.

Math: This week in math we are continuing our work with decimals. Our main focus will be on finding patterns, using these patterns to solve problems involving modeling as well as real-world applications (such as buying in bulk). We will also continue working on comparing, ordering, and finding relationships between decimals and fractions. Our toothpick project will be taking place this week. That is always a great way for students to understand the depth of our number system.

In your child’s agenda, you will find a list of topics he or she might want to review (this is not required) using Khan Academy based on their performance on the weekly quiz from Friday. Please see the blog post from February 2-6 regarding login information and the “assignments” in Khan Academy. You can find this list on the far right side of this week in their agenda, and you should be able to find the quiz in their math section of their binder.

History: By now, the students should have already conducted their relative interview and taken some solid notes. If they haven’t yet, then they should really coordinate with you all to help get that finished in the next few days.

Happy Wednesday!

It was a BEAUTIFUL day so our fifth-graders enjoyed a little extra recess today. We were amazed at how this changed their mindset for the rest of the afternoon in a positive manner. There is a lot of research that suggests time spent outside helps all of us with everything from lowering our stress hormone, to increasing our ability to focus, to helping us communicate better and be more empathetic. Today was a good reminder that we all need to take a break to enjoy the world around us when possible!

Here are a few important items to note:

• Swimming starts the week of March 16 and continues through April 3. Please see the letter that came home with your child from Mrs. Wimble regarding exact dates and other details.
• There will be no classes for Lower School students on conference day Friday, March 13. Mr. Barzditis will be celebrating in his brother’s wedding out of town on that day, so we are working on creating a conference schedule in order to still be able to meet with each of you. Be on the lookout for a link to this schedule in the next few days. Please know that we continue to welcome you to contact us at any time throughout the year should you have any questions or concerns. We would be more than happy to meet with you to discuss your child’s progress, as well as our goals and objectives for this year.
• Our D.A.R.E graduation will be held at 2 p.m. on March 31 in the Reed Theater. Our fifth-grade students have been learning from Deputy Young all year and are working hard on their essays in order to graduate from the program. We hope you will be able to join us for this event. Please know, you are welcome to sign your child out following the program and pictures (which should conclude at about 3 p.m.
• Our field trip to Richmond and Williamsburg will be April 23-24. It is very important that all fifth-grade students join us for this overnight trip. Upon returning from our trip, each student will write a reflection paper about their experience. Students will need to be here at 7:45 a.m. the morning of Thursday, April 23, and will arrive back to school in time for carpool on Friday, April 24. We are still waiting on the pricing confirmation from one of our stops, but the cost of our trip will be no more than $65/student. As soon as we confirm our lunch pricing for Friday, we will send home exact details.
• Don’t forget to check out the Google Drive folder which we upload all of our pictures to in order to share them with you. There are several great pictures (like these) from our with spend celebrating the 100th day as well as from the exciting Angry Cats game that took place before winter break.

Congratulations are again in order for Elizabeth and Cabell as they put on an outstanding performance in CYT’s recent production of Frozen, Jr.

Here’s what has been happening in our classes this week:

Language Arts: As the students continue working through their Spinelli novels, we’ve also been extensively covering the different kinds of sentences (Simple, Compound, Complex). This approach connects back to our review of prepositions from a while ago, but became incredibly relevant as they’re putting the finishing touches on their rough drafts of their D.A.R.E. essays. In addition to their Reading Logs this week, their homework has been a series of exercises reviewing the differences between these kinds of sentences, working with independent and dependent clauses, and reinforcing punctuation rules when working with compound and complex sentences. We’ll conclude this week with a short quiz on Friday in which each of their homework assignments will prove to be effective study guides.

Math: Following break, we have picked right back up with our work on our base-ten number system. We had an interesting conversation about why the “units, rods, and cubes” they have been using are called “base-ten blocks”. We discussed why these manipulatives would not be helpful in dealing with our clock system, and briefly discussed the binary numeral system. By extending students’ thinking to these other number systems, it helps them see the patterns within our own numerical system. One of the topics we have been working on this week, is the importance of always knowing what we are referring to when we refer to a “whole”. For example, it is a common misunderstanding for students to write 0.45 cents (as opposed to 45 cents or $0.45). If the unit is considered to be a dollar, then 45 hundredths of a dollar would be a correct notation. When students write 0.45 cents instead, they are really referring to less than half of a penny! By changing units (and which base-ten block represents the whole) students begin to think much more flexibly about numbers. As a former middle school math teacher and math specialist for 15 years, I cannot express to you how crucial this flexibility is as students prepare for more complex work with fractions and percentages in the upcoming years. I have to admit, this part of the year and the fifth-grade math curriculum is my favorite. I absolutely love seeing all the pieces of the solid foundation students have built all year, and in previous years, come together. This is the time of year when I can almost actually see light bulbs turning on in students’ eyes as I walk around the room and as we hold class discussions.

As a side note, some parents have asked for a way to review concepts their student might be struggling with from earlier in the year. Each student has a Khan Academy account which we have used some this year. I have added all of the concepts we have worked on this year to their assignments. These are NOT actually assignments, but a way for you to see what should be review at this point in the year. As we move along, I will continue to add to the assignments so you know the topic has been covered. Please let me know if you have any questions at all. I am still learning how to best use this site, so please feel free to send any feedback you have my way!

Here are instructions for how to log on and use the site:

1. Go to https://www.khanacademy.org/
2. Click Login (in the top right corner)
3. Click “Continue with Google”. When the login for Google comes up, it is your child’s normal login that he/she uses to get on his/her Google account at school- probably first initial, then last name@fredericksburgacademy.org      (for example, kmcgehee@fred…) The password should be: falcon2027
4. Once logged in, in the top right corner go to the drop down from the login name and choose “Learner home”
5. On the far left column choose “Assignments”
6. There are several (again, I added everything just in case anyone wants to practice anything from so far this year). In the list of assignments:

History: We’re very glad to see that so many of the students were able to conduct their Relative Interviews over the break. If your student did not, then no worries, as they’ll have until March 18th to work on the project. The students will have time to work on this project in class, but plan on some outside planning, especially in regards to the interview, transcription, and possibly some posterboard progress if they choose to go that route.

We’ve also recently been bringing our Immigration unit to an end, reviewing the Ellis Island process and thinking critically about Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus,” which has been inscribed on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty’s base since 1903. Working individually and in groups, the students have carefully read through the poem, making theories and connections between its poetic qualities and the immigrant experience we’ve been learning about in class, and then articulating how the poem speaks to the lives and struggles of those who made the journey.

Science: Unfortunately we were not able to complete the online activity I had planned before break about the circulatory system, so we will finish this system up on Thursday. We will then dive in to the respiratory system.

Thank you for your continued support! We look forward to talking with you during conferences in a few weeks.

Kimberly & Tim

Happy Wednesday! The impact of the rain all last week, coupled with this being the week before Winter Break, is taking a toll on all of us. Be sure to have your student get as much rest as possible…they will not want to miss our big event planned for Friday afternoon!

There are a few special items to note this week:

• This Friday our fifth-graders will be participating in a game of “Angry Cats” with the Middle School Tacocat teams. If you have not heard yet, Tacocat is a very special part of being a Middle School student here at FA. Please note the colors of your child’s team for Friday below. They should wear as much of their color as possible, comfortable clothes, and sneakers.
  • Red- Amelia, Ethan, Jack
  • Yellow- Kat, Vika, Will
  • Black- Chance, Elizabeth, David
  • White- Tina, Xavier, Hunter
  • Green- Claire, Ayaan, Scarlet
  • Blue- Arav, Olivia, Connor
  • Purple- Cabell, Finn, Isla
  • Orange- Savannah, Silas, Hayley
• Report cards and comments will be available for you to view via Veracross Friday afternoon. Please keep an eye out for an email from Mrs. Estes for details.
• Agendas: We are working on helping your child learn to use their agenda for more than just homework. This is an important skill because they will need to keep track of all of their assignments from several individual teachers next year. We encourage you to help them use their agendas for other outside events as well. So far, they should have added the due dates for their D.A.R.E. essays, as well as back-filled the days leading up to the due dates with reminders. Please know this is an essay that will be written during class and should not be done at home. Thank you!

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

Language Arts: This week, we’ve continued to practice our skills with utilizing evidence from source texts, moved onto the next chapters in our Spinelli novels, and prepared for our impending vocab quiz this Friday. For this quiz, the students should be studying the words they’ve defined between this week and last, and it will follow the same “complete-the-sentence” format as the previous quiz. Finally, depending on how the students progress by the end of the week, we plan on utilizing some of the new material from our Spinelli novels to reimagine their content as a “found poem” and small-group discussions about each of their processes.

Math: The understanding of a decimal as something beyond “cents in a dollar amount” is difficult. In fifth grade, students move beyond the hundredths position in our number system to the thousandths. It is mind-boggling that we can infinitely keep zooming in on our numbers to make them more and more precise. We are working on making sense of this throughout the week and will be returning to this when we come back from Winter Break. 

History: As the students have likely mentioned to you already, we soft-introduced our next project within History. As a way to cap off our Immigration unit, the students will be conducting an interview with a family relative to learn more about their history, their culture, and where they came from. This project won’t be due until after Winter Break and they’ll have plenty of time to work on it in class, but because the students will likely need help in contacting their (potentially distant) relatives (whether by phone, email, snail mail, Skype, in-person, etc.), we wanted to put it on our all of our radars now.  

Science: Students practiced counting their heart rates and also felt a little snippet of what it would be like to work like our cardiac muscles do every day. We will be finishing up our sketch notes and doing an online activity which will help students realize how much our circulatory system affects our entire bodies. Stay tuned…a new body system will be discussed after the break!

As always, 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 and a wonderful break!

Kimberly & Tim

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

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.

Hold on to your hats folks! This year we have a REALLY quick turn around between Thanksgiving Break and the Holiday Break.

THANK YOU so much for the wonderful birthday surprise! The cards, gifts, flowers, and cupcakes were such a wonderful, unexpected treat. – Kimberly

Below you will find a few pictures of things that have been going on in fifth grade recently.

Decorating the Gingerbread Houses for the PFA’s Holiday Breakfast (We hope to see you there THIS SATURDAY- see flyer)

*Special thanks to our room parents who were able to come in to help with this project!

An afternoon game of Codenames- if you have not checked this game out, you definitely should. We both highly recommend it!

Congratulations to Cabell and Elizabeth on a wonderful job in the latest CYT production, A Christmas Carol!

Here is what we are up to in our academic classes this week:

Reading: Though we finished reading Holes before we departed for Thanksgiving Break, we have a few more upcoming tasks and activities I’d like to do before saying goodbye to Stanley Yelnats. Firstly, the students will put the finishing touches on their Peach Recipe Projects so they can present them between Wednesday and Thursday. Once each group has presented their recipe research, my goal is for them to vote on the recipe they’re most interested in so that next week, we can put on our chef hats and get in the kitchen.

We’ve also been looking at the ways in which justice (and its nasty inverse, injustice) is a key theme of the book. We began by looking at the ways in which wrongs have been enacted upon our main characters, how these wrongs influence their decisions, and determining whether they’re redeemed and justified by their narratives’ end. Determining whether some characters and actions are justifiable becomes a little murky and abstract, so we’ll continue with this theme throughout the week.

Math: We have been working on strengthening our understanding of patterns. Students have been using a rule to generate and analyze patterns. These patterns are then plotted as an input (x) and output (y) on a coordinate grid using the format (x,y). This is the beginning steps of the algebra we remember from our school years. I love teaching this unit because it really leads students into seeing relationship between math and science. We have been using Khan Academy as a tool in class as well. There is so much to learn right at our fingertips with this site. You just might find your children looking to learn chemistry, art history, or any of the other many “courses” listed on the site!

History:

Before the break, we took a pre-test to see where each of the students were at with their knowledge of US States, but now that we’re back, we’re hitting the ground running with this unit. Today, we identified the eleven states (and their capitals) in the Northeastern Region (New England down to Maryland) and practiced identifying each on blank maps. Tomorrow, they’ll have these maps handed back to them which they should use to study for the region quiz we’ll have near the end of the week.

On Wednesday, we’ll also be introducing our State Project, in which each student will be responsible for researching and compiling information on their assigned state, such as their state flag, bird, motto, and drink, for example. Once each student has completed their research and created slides with their information, we will assemble a slideshow of all 50 states for them to use as we progress through the unit.

Science: Our scientific method unit has technically come to a close. Your child should be asking you to sign and return their science test tonight a part of their homework. Once I have checked off the parent signature for them, please know that the test will be in the science section of their binder should you wish to look it over more closely with your child. Just because we have finished our unit, does not mean we are “done” with the scientific method. As I am sure the students are well aware, this is a topic that repeats throughout all scientific investigation.

We are in the beginning phases of our garden project as well. Soon six work teams will be developed to work on specific goals in relation to revamping of the garden in the Lower School Playscape. We are looking forward to hearing all about their research and designs with this yearlong project!

Have a wonderful (short) week!

Kimberly & Tim

It is so hard to believe we only have this week and half of next until Thanksgiving Break! Please remember students will be dismissed on Wednesday, November 27 at 11:55 a.m. for the long holiday weekend. School will resume Tuesday, December 3.

If you have not yet logged in to Veracross to see your student’s report card and comments, please do so. Your child now receives letter grades for all core subjects. It is important that students understand how their daily homework, classwork, and assessment grades affect their overall letter grade this year rather than next year in middle school. You should have received an email from Mrs. Estes on Friday with directions for accessing the report card. If you need help logging in to your Parent Portal, please let us know. 

Along the lines of grades and report cards, please help us support your child by signing their agenda each night after looking to see that they have completed their homework. The homework we assign is not lengthy or difficult. Many times, when we sign off on students’ agendas in the morning, we find agendas are signed even though homework is not complete.  As we discussed with the class during our morning meeting today, it is not necessary for you to check for accuracy, but we would like homework to be completed before they ask you to sign their agenda. Thank you so much for holding our students accountable with this.

Here’s what we have planned in our classes between now and Thanksgiving Break:

Reading: This week, we’re recapping last week’s eight chapters of Holes in a slightly different way than before; your students will be acting the chapters out for each other, giving their own personal spin on the main events we read about. Much of today was spent on the limitations, angles, and opportunities each group has with their material, as well as rehearsal time. We aim to have each of the groups present for their homerooms tomorrow, allowing us then to smoothly move onto the selected chapters for this week.

Additionally, in the same groups, the students will be collaborating on a project that allows them to research various peach-themed recipes and come up with their own new spin. In Holes, one of the characters was “small-town famous” for her spiced peaches. This research/creative project will not only allow each group to add a new layer to the story, but it also may result in some tasty treats before we head off for Thanksgiving.

Lastly, we’ll be introducing the concept of irony (and its variants) and applying it to the major events and locales of the story. Holes is simply teeming with irony, and while many of the students have picked up on some of its various absurdities and misnomers, I’d like to focus on extracting these moments so that we can work through their implications before we finish the book next week.

Math: This week we are continuing to work on solving word problems. We are building on this skill by writing expressions and equations that represent these word problems. Students are beginning to grasp the concept of using variables in place of unknown values. When given the value of a variable, students are learning they can substitute that value in for the variable in order to evaluate the expression. Many students have enjoyed seeing the trajectory of math ahead of them as we have solved a few tougher equations. We have also reviewed the commutative and associative properties (of addition and multiplication), as well as the distributive property. These mathematical properties will serve as basic tools in students’ toolboxes not only in mental math, but also as variables become more prevalent in students’ future math work. As a former middle school math teacher, it is exciting to see students constructing an understanding of basic algebraic foundations.

Science: We are wrapping up our scientific method unit this week with a quiz on Friday. Students will be given a list of terms they must be able to define, identify, and use in context in order to help them study. Please know, one of the questions will be to place the six steps of the scientific method in order. All concepts should be found within the science section of their binders. Next week we will do a few fun activities to discuss safety as well as learn some of the names for common tools used in science.

S.T.E.A.M.

This past Friday the class was given a challenge to work in groups to create a marble run that could reach the length of their tables using only paper towel cardboard rolls. It was so fun to see the kids attempting this team building S.T.E.A.M. exercise! Although no team officially conquered the challenge, it was a good way for them to see firsthand the importance of listening to each other and working together. We are looking forward to challenging them again soon, and we are especially excited to see their teamwork grow throughout the year!

Have a great week and a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

Kimberly & Tim

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