We’ve had such a great time in 5th grade so far! In the past couple of weeks, we met our buddies, created working cars out of cardboard, had a blast at Fall Fest, wrote amazing stories, planned a trip to Seattle, and started our science unit project.
Here’s a deeper dive into what we’ve been doing:
Science
Unit 1 is all about the engineering process. We’ve learned about tradeoffs, prototypes, criteria, and constraints. We spend our science lessons discussing real life examples and tie everything back to this lesson’s anchoring phenomenon, which is cars have changed and improved over time. We use our own experiences with building our cardboard cars to understand why we have to sacrifice some features for functionality. As we wrap up this unit, groups are building board games for a theoretical “STEM Night.” We will take a test next week as well. I love this science program because it’s all about hands-on engagement and we’re on our way to becoming junior scientists! Our next unit is Matter. We will explore its properties and its different forms. This will lay the foundation for the next few science units.
English Language Arts
We’re diving into digraphs! We recently had a prompt in which we created advertisements or brochures to recruit scientists to help study penguins in Antarctica. Fifth grade got really creative, and I think some of our students are going to learn to speak penguin!
Social Studies
We finished up learning about the five themes of geography! This concept will help us understand the motivations of the people who migrated to the Americas. Students wrote a letter to a friend (someone wrote to a frog) about a trip and described it using the 5 themes! We are now learning about how the first Americans got here through the Bering Strait Land Bridge Theory. Next up, a deeper dive into the Native Americans.
Reading
We are steadily making progress in our personal narratives. We’ve learned about the main idea in a text and how to support the it with details. All students have already submitted their topics for their personal narratives and I am so excited to read them! The Independent Reading project is also underway and the project is due September 30. Additional information is up on Google Classroom. Our first book choice is a free choice!
Religion
We learned the differences between the church and the Church, Paschal Mystery, Jesus’ mission, what makes the Kingdom of God and how we can grow it! We just started learning about the liturgy and what it means to evangelize. The students just finished up a small project in which they had to write and direct a commercial that tells us to spread the Good News.
Upcoming Events:
PBIS Assembly: Our first PBIS assembly is Wednesday the 18th. There are some fun changes this year! Ask your child about the updated program and see how they can work towards being more compassionate, respectful, and responsible.
Grandfriend’s Mass is Thursday the 19th at 1:15 pm. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, or any other special person in your child’s life is welcome to come and celebrate with us!
i-Ready: We will wrap up the Math and Reading Diagnostics this upcoming week!
Reminders: Starting Monday the 16th, late homework will automatically receive a 25% deduction. After school commitments or losing homework are not excuses for not completing homework. Please notify me as soon as possible if there is a problem! And please charge Chromebooks before coming to school. I do not have spare chargers.
That’s all! Have a wonderful weekend and week ahead!