I hope you all found plenty of time to relax and enjoy the sunshine this weekend :)
Math
We were full swing into curriculum this week in 5-2. Those students in my math class are about halfway through the first unit. We will do a mid-unit review quiz tomorrow to identify understanding of content. The Unit 1 Assessment is scheduled for Monday, September 16th. As a reminder, please be sure your child is practicing their multiplication and division facts with your students. The automaticity of their facts becomes increasingly important as they move through the 5th grade curriculum. They can review their facts by playing Facts Dash or Facts Workshop using their Everydaymathonline.com login. I would also strongly suggest your child reviews the concepts taught in this unit by playing the Unit 1 games on the same site.
Homework Policy
As I explained on Curriculum Night, we do not grade homework in 5th grade as we consider it practice of skills taught during the day. We do, however, check homework together every day. If a student doesn't meet expectations when completing their homework, we do ask them to re-do the assignment to ensure an understanding of concepts taught. We feel it is more beneficial for students to have a mastery of concepts than it is for them to receive a poor grade on an assignment. You may have seen some work coming home a second time for completion. Sometimes, they will just be asked to correct the problems they got wrong, and sometimes they will be asked to re-do the entire assignment. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Science
In science last week, we began our science exploration in the Human Body Unit by running a couple of laps around our field, then sat down to make observations about how our bodies changed as a result of exercise. They were also expected to record why they think these changes occurred - we will be learning the reasons our bodies respond the way they do to exercise throughout this unit. We also took our pre-test for the upcoming unit. Most of the students were able to demonstrate some of the foundational understandings of this unit. I am impressed with the background knowledge your children bring to this unit! It will be exciting to have the opportunity to enrich this unit with additional information.
As I mentioned on Curriculum Night, 5-2 is participating in a Common Core Pilot. With this pilot, your child will be exposed to several complex non-fiction text throughout the year that will all be related to our science curriculum. They will learn to critically read non-fiction text, and analyze it for deeper understanding of content. This week, they read The Human Machine, and they learned how to identify organizational structure and summarize this complex text.
Reading
We started week one of our Treasures curriculum this week. Students learned to identify character traits in a variety of texts and find evidence from the text to support their claims. We took the Weekly Assessment on Friday, testing the vocabulary, comprehension strategies, grammar and spelling from the week. In 5th grade, students take their tests on MimioVote, a responder system that enters their scores using remote devices. This is a paperless system, so we do not send home paper copies of the test. They do write their written responses on an answer sheet, and I record their final test scores on this sheet (Weekly Literacy Assessment Report). These scores are broken down into the components of the test so we have a better understanding of how your child performed on the test. I also record the scores from their spelling, grammar, and vocabualry tests on the Literacy Report. Your child will bring this report home for a signature on Mondays - please be sure to sign and return. If you should ever want to see a detailed copy of your child's performance on the test, I can email you an electronic copy - simply email me a request.
As I mentioned on Curriculum Night, your child has the option to Re-take/Re-do any project or assessment if they are not pleased with their grade. If they do not pass the assignment or project, I will ask them to re-take or re-do it. They will complete a Re-take/Re-do Contract with me which will require additional work for the unit, then they will have the another opportunity to complete it. If your child is ever discouraged by their assessment scores, please encourage them to see me about a re-do.
Writing
We will start Book 1 of WEX this week - Personal Narratives. Students will be writing daily in their journals (Word documents), and weekly submitting an entry of their choice to me for review and grade. We will be working on focus in our writing for the first few lessons, and will continue to add rich, sensory details to our narratives as we focus on the moment.
Students upload their writing to Edmodo, where I will comment and return their writing for a Revision Assignment. The Revision Assignments are generally completed on Friday, and returned with a grade. Your child submits most of their daily work on Edmodo. Please feel free to use your child's login to view their work. Have them show you around, particularly where they find their grades and comments from me on assignments.
Edmodo
As you are aware, much of our daily work is completed on Edmodo. You may have logged on to see some of the work they are involved in, and perhaps noticed some late assignments. Please know that many of their assignments are completed in small groups, so one member will submit the work, leaving the other members appearing as if they did not submit the assignment. I do grade those group assignments and post them on each of their accounts, but in the interim it may look as if your child did not submit an assignment. Many of these assignments are also classwork only, and do not go home as homework. If a student doesn't finish the assignment in class, I will give them time to complete the assignment the next day in class. Again, it may appear as if their assignment is late.
The assignment notebook is where homework assignments are recorded. If your child has a late assignment, you will receive notification with a late slip and strike sheet. If you have NOT received one of these sheets, assume that your child does not have a late assignment, even though Edmodo may show a late assignment.
Hope that clears up any miscommunication! Please ask if you have any further questions about how our paperless classroom works!
“The child must
know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't
been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.”
– Pablo Casals
Enjoy your week!
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