This Week in Room 33! Jan. 13-17

***As a reminder, students should have a pair of earbuds or headphones at school to utilize when viewing videos and listening to audiobooks. Thank you for making sure your student has one at school! 

What to expect this week in 5th grade…

ELA: This week we will begin our social issues book club (we will begin on Tuesday!) and continue our journalism unit.  Students will work with their new book club group to analyze the way different authors address & craft similar social issues in both literature & current events.  In writing, students will keep working to perfect their reporting craft by focusing on keeping their articles short and concise.  

***Students should read their assigned book club book in school and at home. When they reach their stopping point, they can continue reading their choice books. I am looking forward to the amount of reading, deep thinking and conversing that will be happening in our classroom!

STEAM: We are continuing chapter 8 with lessons on simplest form, problem solving, least common multiple, and using the ladder method to help find the GCF, LCM, and simplest form. Students brought home their new Volume 2 math textbook last week. Please keep them home for extra practice when necessary. We will also be starting our next unit of study in science→ Our Place in the Universe!

This week in Room 33! Jan. 6-10

This Week in Room 33! Jan. 6-10

Welcome back and Happy New Year! Thank you SO much for all the sweet and thoughtful gifts.
I felt so spoiled and appreciated! I can't believe it is my last week of long-term subbing already!
Mrs. Schaefer will be back on Thursday, and I know the kids are so excited to see her! Thank you
for sharing your students with me over the last three months! I have truly loved getting to know
them and will miss them SO very much! I hope everyone enjoyed their winter break and that you
are all relaxed and ready for the 2nd half of 5th grade!

***As a reminder, students should have a pair of earbuds or headphones at school to
utilize when viewing videos and listening to audiobooks. Thank you for making sure
your student has one at school! 

What to expect this week in 5th grade…

ELA: We will be launching a new unit on social issues book clubs and we are excited to begin
a new writing unit on journalism! Students will be expected to read their assigned pages each
day/night and participate in daily discussions with their book club. Their homework each night
will include reading the pages that their group has decided on. This counts as their 20 minutes!
Students will learn what social issues are and how our reading experiences help us empathize with
characters and other people around us. In writing, students will practice observing events, taking factual
notes, and writing short news articles in order to retell the event and evoke emotion from their audience.

STEAM:  We are now in Volume 2 of our math series and starting chapter 8 on fractions and
decimals. This week our focus is on relating fractions and division. Please practice those basic
multiplication and division facts with your student- it is SO important to know them quickly in order
to efficiently perform these new skills. Thank you for all your hard work at home! Check out Math
Magician for extra practice. We will also begin our unit on the universe, focusing first on the
question,  what is the solar system? Our unit will be working towards how we analyze and
interpret data to write an opinion piece about where we want to spend our next birthday?

This week in Room 33! Dec. 9-13

This Week in Room 33! Dec. 9-13

This will be the last week to bring in any items for Helping Hands. 

What to expect this week in 5th grade…

ELA: We are continuing to work on our research report.  We are focusing on primary sources and citing sources within our reports.  Another important part of our writing process will be making sure to include our thinking by synthesizing across the texts we have read!  Research reports will be celebrated on Wednesday, December 18th before winter break.  

STEAM:  We will be reviewing chapter 5 and 6, multiplying and dividing with decimals, and having breakout sessions where students can move across the 5th grade classrooms to get more support or push their understanding.  We will also begin Chapter 7: Patterns and Expressions in math this week.  We will cover the topics of writing expressions and using the order of operations.  In science, be sure your ask your child how their data collection is going with tracking their water usage. Your child is working on an end of unit project where they are asked to track their water usage for a period of time. Between now and next Thursday (due Friday morning), they should choose 3 days to track their water usage and upload their data into their digital student notebook. They should also complete the reflection questions that follow this activity on the next page of their digital notebook. We will then use this data to develop a PSA to our Concord Flyer families about ways they can conserve water. 

This week in Room 33! Dec. 1-6

This Week in Room 33! Dec. 1-6

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and had a chance to relax and recharge. The holiday season is my favorite time of year :) I can't believe we only have 3 weeks (15 school days) before winter break and the end of 2nd quarter!

STEAM:  We are excited to begin dividing decimals this week!  We will focus on dividing

decimals with models, dividing decimals by whole numbers and decimals, as well as by the powers of 10.  In science, we will study how we can reduce our carbon footprint.

ELA: This week we will be researching individuals who impacted the Civil War. Each
student was assigned one Civil War individual to research, and we will use articles, videos,
and books to conduct our research.  We are focusing on note-taking strategies, as well as how
to determine if a website is an appropriate site to use for research.

Looking ahead: 

-Scholastic book fair is Wednesday-Friday this week. I will send students who bring money to purchase at the end of the day. 

-World Holiday Festival is this Friday. Please wear your holiday best attire as we celebrate all of the holiday traditions in our Concord community. 

-Saturday is Winter Festival and choir performance 9-12. Purchase your tickets here. 

Winter Party Update:

The 5th grade teachers will be hosting the upcoming winter party on December 20th. Throughout the morning, students will be allowed to mingle with all of their 5th grade friends in a variety of settings. Students will have access to board/strategy math games, arts and crafts, snap circuits, legos, robots borrowed from the library, and much more. For the morning, we ask that students bring their own snack and drink if they choose. Students will not be participating in the traditional "party time" outlined for the rest of the school. We will not need any parent volunteers that day.

This Week in Room 33! Nov. 18-22

This Week in Room 33! Nov. 18-22

Reminders for the week

• Fine Arts Night and PTG Meeting: We would like to invite all families to join us on Tuesday, November 19th at 6:00 p.m. for our 1st ever Fine Arts Night and PTG meeting.

• Keep sending in Helping Hands items! This week is cleaning products!

• There are still lots of items on the Giving Tree that are needing to be purchased. Please check out this link to see if you can help some of Concord's families.

• This Friday, November 22 is Wacky Day!  Wear your wacky clothes, hair, socks, or anything you can think of!  Bring in some change or a couple dollars to raise money for helping hands.

Chain of Thankfulness 

Dear Families,

It is a great time of year to reflect on how lucky we are and think about what we are thankful for. On Tuesday, your child will bring home strips of construction paper for members of your family to fill out. We are creating a chain of thankfulness for our classroom and we would love for you to join us! 

Please write one thing you are thankful for on the strip of paper with your name on the back. This is not a required assignment, but more so a fun way to involve you in our classroom.
Thank you for your time and I hope to see some links come back soon!

What to expect this week in 5th grade...

ELA: This week we will be  studying the causes of the Civil War for our next writing unit. Students will spend each day on a different topic within the Civil War. We will use articles, videos, and books to cover each topic. The students will stop each day to reflect on the topic and write about it’s impact.  We are focusing on overcoming challenges of reading complex texts such as using context and morphology to figure out tricky vocabulary, determining main ideas/summarizing, noticing text structures, and monitoring our own reading. 

STEAM:  We are excited to begin multiplying decimals!  We will focus on multiplying decimals with models, multiplying decimals by whole numbers and decimals, as well as by the powers of 10.  In science, we will study the Earth’s systems and how they interact with each other. 

This week in Room 33! Nov. 11-15

This Week in Room 33! Nov. 11-15

Reminders this week: 

This week is paper products for Helping Hands.

Wednesday is our site visit to BizTown, each student will need to bring their lunch.

The students may dress up according to their job, if they wish.

What to expect this week in 5th grade...

ELA: Students will begin researching causes of the Civil War for our next writing unit. We will be spending the beginning of our unit  learning about the people and events that impacted the Civil War. We are learning how nonfiction texts are getting more complex as we are moving up in reading levels- the main ideas are implicit and the vocabulary is more difficult. We are learning strategies to overcome these challenges! 

STEAM:  We are about ready for the big site visit to BizTown! The students our focusing on filling out their checkbooks, figuring out the payroll tax on their paychecks at BizTown, and making sure their business are ready to open up! On Friday, we will start chapter 6,  multiplying and dividing decimals! We will first be multiplying decimals by whole numbers and then by  decimals by decimals.

In science, In this unit, students will learn about Earth’s systems and natural resources, ways that humans use natural resources, human impacts on Earth systems, and how humans can change behaviors to reduce impacts on the environment. We are testing our wind turbines, and redesigning our prototypes to establish a wind turbine that raises our weighted buckets  the fastest. 

This week in Room 33! Nov. 4-8

This Week in Room 33! Nov. 4-8

Thank you to everyone that helped to make our Halloween/Fall Party so special, the kids had a blast

Reminders this week: 

***Jingles for Jammies is Tuesday 11/5!!

***Helping Hands kicks off this week! Bring in those food items:)

***Veterans' Day Assembly is next Monday!!.

Biztown Permission Slip: CLICK HERE!  

What to expect this week in 5th grade...

ELA: Students are revising and editing their memoirs. They are due this Friday. The students are looking at adding more figurative language into their pieces and using the checklist to guide them as they revise.  Students are wrapping up their third round of book clubs (optional) and will be making a kahoot for their book club members to recap their discussions. 

STEAM:  Please ask your student to show you their math “Check My Progress” assessment from Wednesday  by logging into their Gmail. They did a great job with adding and subtracting decimals! We are ready to start chapter 6 next week- multiplying and dividing decimals! In the meantime we are getting ready for our site visit to BizTown. Students will be assigned their job and will begin working with their cohorts to get ready for the day.