Hello 5-2 Families ~
I hope you're enjoying the slightly warmer temperatures this weekend. Keep thinking Spring, and we'll make it before too long!!
Important Dates
Friday, February 28th ~ Due date for Six Flags Read to Succeed Reading Log. This is the program that earns your child a free Six Flags ticket for this summer. You simply need to complete the Reading Log, and they'll receive a free ticket at the end of the year. Your child was given this Reading Log early in the school year. I send another copy of this Reading Log to your email - just print and complete!
Tuesday, March 4th ~ 5th Grade Band Concert at 7pm
ISAT Testing ~ It's that time of year again! Our ISATS are scheduled as follows:
- Monday, March 3rd, 1:30-2:45pm - Reading #1
- Tuesday, March 4th, 1:30-2:45 - Reading #2
- Wednesday, March 5th, 1:30-2:45 - Reading #3
- Monday, March 10th, 1:30-2:45 - Math #1
- Tuesday, March 11th, 1:30-2:45 - Math #2
- Wednesday, March 12th, 1:30-2:45 - Math #3
Please encourage your child to get a full night's sleep prior to the test dates, and please do your best to minimize absences during these times. It can be very challenging to schedule make-up tests since our window to do so is so small. Students often feel overwhelmed at missing instruction in order to makeup tests later in the week, resulting in additional homework. Thank you for your support!
Friday, March 14th ~ Progress Reports sent home
Thursday, March 20th & 21st ~ As you have heard, these are now student attendance days due to the number of extreme weather days we have had to take this winter. This means we will no longer meet for parent-teacher conferences. Many questions during the 5th grade spring conferences are about middle school transitions, including placement into classes. I will do my best to continue to update you via this blog about the transitions, and try to answer those questions that I am frequently asked about the transition. Several other questions are related to the end of the year 5th grade activities. Again, I will keep you posted about all those activities via this blog. If you have ANY questions at all, please do not hesistate to contact me. I fully appreciate the additional anxiety families feel during this transition, and want to make it as smooth as possible :)
If I feel it is important to still meet with you about the progress of your child, I will reach out to you individually to set up a time to meet. If I do not reach out to you, please assume your child is making progress and I have no concerns about them. Several parents have approached me about setting up a conference time because those days have been canceled. If you have pressing concerns, I would be happy to meet with you. But if you have questions that can be answered via email, please feel free to contact me this way instead. It can get challenging trying to schedule 19 parent-teacher conferences after school :) That being said, I would be happy to meet with all 19 of you if there is a need!
I hope you're enjoying the slightly warmer temperatures this weekend. Keep thinking Spring, and we'll make it before too long!!
Important Dates
Friday, February 28th ~ Due date for Six Flags Read to Succeed Reading Log. This is the program that earns your child a free Six Flags ticket for this summer. You simply need to complete the Reading Log, and they'll receive a free ticket at the end of the year. Your child was given this Reading Log early in the school year. I send another copy of this Reading Log to your email - just print and complete!
Tuesday, March 4th ~ 5th Grade Band Concert at 7pm
ISAT Testing ~ It's that time of year again! Our ISATS are scheduled as follows:
- Monday, March 3rd, 1:30-2:45pm - Reading #1
- Tuesday, March 4th, 1:30-2:45 - Reading #2
- Wednesday, March 5th, 1:30-2:45 - Reading #3
- Monday, March 10th, 1:30-2:45 - Math #1
- Tuesday, March 11th, 1:30-2:45 - Math #2
- Wednesday, March 12th, 1:30-2:45 - Math #3
Please encourage your child to get a full night's sleep prior to the test dates, and please do your best to minimize absences during these times. It can be very challenging to schedule make-up tests since our window to do so is so small. Students often feel overwhelmed at missing instruction in order to makeup tests later in the week, resulting in additional homework. Thank you for your support!
Friday, March 14th ~ Progress Reports sent home
Thursday, March 20th & 21st ~ As you have heard, these are now student attendance days due to the number of extreme weather days we have had to take this winter. This means we will no longer meet for parent-teacher conferences. Many questions during the 5th grade spring conferences are about middle school transitions, including placement into classes. I will do my best to continue to update you via this blog about the transitions, and try to answer those questions that I am frequently asked about the transition. Several other questions are related to the end of the year 5th grade activities. Again, I will keep you posted about all those activities via this blog. If you have ANY questions at all, please do not hesistate to contact me. I fully appreciate the additional anxiety families feel during this transition, and want to make it as smooth as possible :)
If I feel it is important to still meet with you about the progress of your child, I will reach out to you individually to set up a time to meet. If I do not reach out to you, please assume your child is making progress and I have no concerns about them. Several parents have approached me about setting up a conference time because those days have been canceled. If you have pressing concerns, I would be happy to meet with you. But if you have questions that can be answered via email, please feel free to contact me this way instead. It can get challenging trying to schedule 19 parent-teacher conferences after school :) That being said, I would be happy to meet with all 19 of you if there is a need!
Math
We finished up unit 7 on Friday, and will prepare for the test by reviewing on Monday. The Unit 7 Assessment will be Tuesday, Febrary 25th. The review session will be on Monday, February 26th during lunch recess. Please encourage your child to attend if they have been struggling with the content this unit. I continue to try to develop a sense of ownership in their learning by giving them guidelines for deciding if they should attend. Ultimately, however, I do leave attendance to these review sessions optional - please email me if you are concerned your child is not choosing to stay in for these sessions and you would like them to participate.
Before we begin Unit 8, we will spend several days preparing for the ISAT assessments by taking practice tests. I will send these tests home for you to review with your child. It might be valuable for you to review the expectations for the assessment as the expectations for these standardized tests are changing. Please let me know if you have any questions at all.
Before we begin Unit 8, we will spend several days preparing for the ISAT assessments by taking practice tests. I will send these tests home for you to review with your child. It might be valuable for you to review the expectations for the assessment as the expectations for these standardized tests are changing. Please let me know if you have any questions at all.
Science/Social Studies
Please look for the Watery Earth Final Unit Assessment grade to come home on Monday for a sign and return. We will take a week to prepare for the ISAT tests before we move on to our Social Studies unit. The ISAT tests this year have been modified to better represent the Common Core aligned PARCC assessment they will be taking next year. The 5th grade team has worked hard to gather sample assessment to better prepare students for these tests. As with the math, I will be sending home these tests after we take them so that you may review the new expectations. Again, please feel free to ask any questions about these upcoming tests.
After ISAT practice, we will return to Social Studies for the next two months. We will pick up where we left off after the Revolutionary War, and study how our country formed a new government. We will spend time learning about the Constituion and Bill of Rights, then on to Westward Expansion.
Reading
We will be swapping our Treasures weeks for the next few weeks because it makes more sense with our curriculum. This week, we will be working on Unit 4 Week 4 and practice identifying text structures and writing summaries for non-fiction texts on extreme weather. This ties in well to the end of our Watery Earth unit, and works best in a full 5-day week. We will be teaching Week 3 during the ISAT testing weeks. We will teach one unit of Treasures over the course of two weeks, minimizing classwork and homework during the testing period. The week 3 text focuses on the Constitutional Convention, and ties in nicely with our Social Studies unit.
Writing
We continue to prepare for our Response to Fiction essay by analyzing characters in The Liberation of Gabriel King. Students are learning to identify character traits as demonstrated by the main characters in a text, and finding multiple places in the text to defend their claims. We only have one more prepartory lesson on Monday, then we will begin the work on our final Response to Fiction essay on Tuesday. These essays will be due late next week.
Stay Warm!
No comments:
Post a Comment