Dear Parents,
It has been a pleasure getting to know your students this week! Thank you for writing and sharing about your child in the Million Words or Less assignment. Each day the students are becoming more comfortable with the routines and embracing all of what 5th grade has to offer. We even went on a hike to the Homestead Thursday afternoon during our Environmental Education portion of the week. Soon PowerSchool will be completely up and running for students and parents to check grades. Chromebooks were distributed this week. If your child is having difficulty accessing their account, please let us know. Lastly, these weekly newsletters will give you a brief outline of activities from Mrs. Psimaras (5th grade math and Science) and Mrs. Loiacano (5th grade ELA and Social Studies). Please take the time to read to the very end where you will find upcoming dates/events. We will provide a more detailed overview of the year during Curriculum Night (Carson Building is September 15, 6-7pm, location is TBD). In the meantime, please take a moment to look through the 5th grade curriculum here.
Class Switches: Students are getting used to their new classes and teachers. The math teachers are Mrs. Psimaras (5th grade math – AM and PM classes) and Mr. Shin’s (Accelerated class). Math placement procedures can be found on this link. Organization is key as they are learning the responsibility of keeping track of their materials.
Psimaras Math News:
- Started Unit 1: Expressions, Equations, and Volume with a focus on multiplication strategies, use of parentheses, and an introduction to Order of Operations
- Took a baseline assessment that covered multiplication and division facts, recognition of factors and multiples, and multi-digit multiplication
- Completed the first weekly spiral review
- Next week we will learn about how to calculate volume using models and understanding of formulas
Science News:
- Learned about the Scientific Method and its steps as a way to investigate how natural world works
- Compared independent variables to dependent variables during a sorting activity
- Organized their Interactive Science Notebook (ISN)
- Next week we will gather and graph data to analyze results while using different measurement tools
ELA News:
- We learned about the purpose and parts of narrative writing
- We started talking about determining the main idea and finding the supporting details when we read
- We spent time writing our first stories, a somewhat exaggerated version of our summer vacation, based on the style of the book How I Spent My Summer Vacation, by Mark Teague.
- Next week we will continue to work on narrative writing as we prepare for our first novel study
Social Studies News:
- We learned about human migration along with the reasons people would migrate
- Students created posters to entice people to migrate to Illinois
- Next week we will start looking into why people have migrated to the United States in the past
Upcoming Events:
- Tuesday, August 23, 2022-Band Assembly 3-8th 1:15-2:05 pm
- Tuesday, August 23, 2022-Board Meeting 7:00 pm
- Monday, August 29, 2022-School Pictures
- NWEA Math, August 31, 2022
- NWEA ELA, September 1, 2022
- September 13th – Curriculum Night Comstock Building 6-7pm
- September 15th – Curriculum Night Carson Building 6-7 pm
Have a wonderful weekend,
The 5th Grade Team