Week of April 28th

Happy Monday!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and relaxing weekend.

This week (starting tomorrow) will mark the beginning of ISTEP testing. Testing will continue until next Tuesday. With that said, please make sure your child is getting plenty of rest and eating a big breakfast to fuel their brains! :) The students have been working so incredibly hard throughout this semester. I am completely confident that they are going to ROCK this test! As I know many of them get stressed, I will be reminding them tomorrow to RELAX and be CONFIDENT in their abilities. They have been preparing for this for a long time, and I have complete faith in their capabilities.

Schedules will be a bit different this week due to ISTEP. On Tuesday and Wednesday, our class with will take the math portion of the exam from 9:40-10:13. On Thursday, students will take the first session of Language Arts from 11:15-11:56. On Friday, students will take the second session of Language Arts from 11:24-12:07.

Reading: There is no reading street story this week due to ISTEP. Instead we will begin our class novel, Shiloh. I am very excited for this book, and I think the kids will really enjoy it! I thought this would be a nice way for the kids to relax and enjoy a good back after testing :) We will continue stations this week. In guided reading, we will focus on making inferences with informational texts. In stations, students will practice identifying figurative langauge in texts, differing between facts and opinons, and summarizing nonfiction texts. These are all things that will be great review for students as they begin Language Arts testing on Thursday.

Math: We will begin Unit 7 this week in math. This unit will cover exponents, negative numbers, and order of operations. Students will not be receiving math homework (or any homework at all this week). All math work will be done in class.

Writing: This week we are going to be doing a lot of review over combining sentences (using conjunctions), identifying and placing modifiers, and appositives. Students reviewed these skills last week, as we did class rotations with the rest of the fifth grade. This week we will work on making sure we have mastered all of these skills!

*** Please contact me with any questions or concerns regarding this week.

Thanks!

Miss Hetzner

Week of April 14th

Week of April 14th

Reading: Our weekly reading story this week is The Truth About Austin’s Amazing Bats. We will practice the reading strategy of drawing conclusions throughout the week. In stations, students will continue analyzing nonfiction texts and identifying the main idea in various texts.  Students will also be doing a lot of work with word choice and identifying the just right word using context clues. We will continue to meet for book clubs on Wednesday and Thursday. Students will be assigned a certain number of pages to be read each week for book clubs. Students will also be assigned a response piece that they will need to bring completed to book club every week. This is something they will response to in their reader’s notebook.

Math: The math test over Unit 12 will be this coming Friday. We will go over the study guide in class on Thursday to review for the test. The main concepts on the test will be probability, ratios, least common multiple, and greatest common factor.

Writing: This week in writing students will be rotating on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday amongst the fifth grade teachers. Each teacher will be reviewing a different concept. The concepts that will be covered are sentence flipping, combining sentences, appositives, and the types of sentences.

Spelling: Students will have a spelling test on Thursday over the words for The Truth About Austin’s Amazing Bats.

Social Studies: Please contact your child’s Social Studies teacher for an update in this subject.

Science: Please contact Mrs. Hennette for an update in this subject!

Week of April 7th

Reading: Our weekly reading story this week is Ghost Towns of the American West. This week we are focusing on making generalizations about the texts we read. Students will have a lot of practice with this reading strategy throughout the week. In stations, students will work on identifying fiction and nonfiction texts, as well as identifying the main idea and theme of various texts. We will be starting up book clubs in guided reading this week. We will also begin doing a daily review over word choice, main idea, sentence structure, figurative language, and context clues. This will be a quick ten minute review I am incorporating in class every day. This will be a great way to get students ready for ISTEP!

 

 

Math: This week we will begin Unit 12 in math. This chapter will cover probably, ratios, rates, least common multiple, and greatest common factor. These are very important concepts and ones that students will certainly have to work hard at understanding. I will be handing back Unit 11 math tests tomorrow with Tuesday folders. If students scored a C or below and would like to correct these they will have until Monday to return them to me.

 

 

Writing: This week in writing students will be working on word choice. We will work on using more descriptive verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to make our writing more exciting. Students will work with partners throughout the week to practice using WOW words in their writing.

 

 

 

Spelling: Students will have a spelling test on Thursday over the words for Ghost Towns of the American West.

 

 

Social Studies: Please contact your child’s Social Studies teacher for an update in this subject.

 

 

Science: Please contact Mrs. Hennette for an update in this subject!