Welcome New Students and Parents to Team 5B

Welcome to the 5th grade. We will be posting our newsletter for you all. Shortly we will have added some other really neat items to our blog. Check back soon. Have a great start to the 2010-2011 school year.

Mrs. Murray’s Communication Arts

In Communication Arts we have been establishing the routine of the Treasure’s series. Each week, when it is a full week, we have several components of the series that make it successful. On Monday’s, we start with the oral language activity on http://www.macmillanmh.com/ . The students like to call this the “Crazy Fox” activity. The students use Kagan cooperative learning to think-pair-share with the question that “Crazy Fox” asks. We will have reading responses and a reading calendar as homework. I will go over these 2 assignments with the students the first week so they know the expectations. We then have 2 work days in class for the practice book pages/spelling/ grammar practice and small group reading or fluency checks. Thursday will be our assessment day and the students will have their writing assignment for the week. We will finish this on Friday and the students will have some other activities to work on. Please feel free to come and join us!!

Mrs. Lucht’s Math

Parents, we will have a busy week in math. We are mostly reviewing in math right now. We will be covering addition and subtraction algorithms, rounding numbers, visiting place value, using money to illustrate place value, comparing whole numbers, doing sequencing, digits, and even and odd numbers. Math will get progressively more difficult and exciting. I would like to offer you more support. We do math club on Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 7:25 a.m. We cover mathematical concepts, but put it in a fun framework. We also check over our homework for the day. The students can come on any mornings that we have math club. We will be doing accelerated math.. Feel free to ask questions about it at anytime. Students do lots of math in math, which will help them greatly. Thanks so much for all your support. We grade our papers daily so that your child knows immediately how they are doing in math. You may view grades on the web. We also will give a progress report on the 1st and 15th of each month. Thanks for your e-mails and close monitoring of your student’s progress. Sincerely, Mrs. Lucht, Math Teacher

Love’s Classroom News

Communication Arts- Students will be studying Tall Tales. The story elements they will be looking for and how they are developed are setting and plot. Students will also be review compound words, nouns, and sentence development.
Math- Students will be find missing addends and develop an understanding of equations. Students will also complete a test over the first 5 lessons and then another over lessons 6 – 10. There will be a review prior to each test.
Rooster Time- Students will be reading “Don’t Feed the Bully”. Students will also begin with a class reading book and we will have reading activities to go along with this. Each student should have 10 AR points for first quarter and this first book will set them on their way.
Team Time- Students are working on recognizing similarities and differences.

Ms. Bradley’s Social Studies:

To kick off the new year in a new building, students will explore their environment and then create a map based off of their exploration. We will then delve into the six regions of the United States and create a Region Mosaic. Students will learn to identify the states and their capitals in all six regions by the winter break. There will be a short quiz on identifying the regions (not the states or capitals) on Tuesday, August, 24. Once we have the regions underway, we will get into the first chapter of our book which deals with the Ancient Civilizations of America.

Ms. Bradley’s Science:

We will begin our adventure in science learning about Life Science. It all starts with chapter one of our books. Students will learn how and why living things are classified. We will be investigating, experimenting, and sharing ideas to help us understand our concepts throughout the year.

Mrs. Meyer’s Reading and Math

Mrs. Meyer’s class is reading a book by Patricia Polacco called Thank You, Mr. Falker. It describes the struggles of a student who has difficulty in school and is teased by peers. We will be discussing overcoming obstacles and how to be successful in school. We will write about ourselves so we can get to know each other better. We will review rules for writing and work on basic comprehension skills. We will start spelling the week of August 23rd. Throughout the next month, we will be assessing student strengths and weaknesses through formal and informal testing to better plan for instruction. In math, we will review place value, addition and subtraction of larger numbers and work on money.