Week of September 26-30

Wow!!  How time flies!  It is already the last week of September.
We will be wrapping up in the next week or two our initial units of study, especially in Literature.
With that we have some final projects we will be working on.

**A Special note:  5th grade will be competing in our very own Olympics this week Tuesday, as a culminating event from our Genius hour research.  It should be great fun as we compete in our "created games."

5th Grade Language Arts:
Spelling:  Pretest and pages will be assigned on Monday.  We are working on compound words this week.  Pages 34-37 will be due on Thursday along with the final test.
Grammar:  We will do a review and testing of run-on/compound sentences this week.  This is a skill we will continue to come back to as we write more and more.  Then we will move on to Nouns.  The proofreading assignment this week is p. 36 and will be assigned on Thursday, due on Friday.
Grammar is difficult, but the 5th graders are catching on and working hard in class.

Literature:  We are on the last 3 sections of Wonder!  We will finish it early next week. This week we worked on explaining and illustrating the Precepts from the book.  Next week each student will choose a Precept and write about its meaning to them and the relationship it has with their life.  I will post those directions on Google Classroom.

We are starting a Choose Kind Campaign !! 

We are discussing how we can implement the things we are learning from the book in the middle school.  We have numerous ideas and hope to develop a plan this week.  We will update you when we are ready to carry it out.

5th Grade Social studies:

Last week we used expert groups to take notes about the regions where the Native Americans lived.

This week we will use those notes to extend our knowledge of the regions.  Then students will be choosing 1 tribe from one of the regions to research.  This research will result in the creation of shoebox artifacts and our exciting Great Native American Dig activity.  I will post the date of this event in the next week.

There will be a test over the information from the book.  It will probably be early next week, but I will send out an email when we do the study guide.

6th Grade Literature:

This week we are working on Character presentations.  We have taken notes about characters in literature and we are completing group presentations about an assigned character.  We are at a pivotal part in the story and are about to read the most shocking part so far.  We will be wrapping up the book next week. There will be a final test and a vocabulary test for the book.

We will do a few stories out of our 6th grade text book to discuss plot and will then move on to a Lit set where students will have a choice of books to read.

Have a wonderful weekend.  Enjoy the extra day.  Encourage your child to keep working hard and stay on top of their assignments!

Blessings,

Mrs. Brown

Week of September 19-22

We have another short week this week.  However since it is Friday that we miss, it will not change our schedule or assignment pattern.

Highlights from last week!!
5th graders completed their awesome 3D Physical maps of the United States.  They are hanging in the hallway.  We ate the "leftovers" on Friday.
We can't put down reading Wonder!  We love it.  We will probably finish it in the next couple of weeks.
6th grade is really getting into The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.  The plot has thickened.  The suspense is killing us!

On to this week...

5th Grade Language Arts:
Spelling:  Pretest on Monday.  Pages 26-29 assigned and due on Thursday.  We had a few students not complete their pages last week.  We check in class on Wednesdays so they know if they need to bring it home. You may need to check as well.
Grammar: We are still plugging away at the 5th grade skills.  We carefully went over last week's proofreading page before turning it in and walked through the quiz together.  Each week, both of those papers are graded and handed back in class so we can look at them.  They should be coming home for you to see.  This week's proofreading page will be p. 28 assigned on Thursday on Google classroom.
Literature: Last week we did a journal, vocabulary and a quiz for Wonder.  All of those will be returned this week.  This week we will begin to think about the extended projects for this book.  We will discuss and develop our own "Choose Kind" campaign, and be looking at the precepts from the book.  There will be a writing assignment connected to the precepts and I will send a separate email when that happens.

5th Grade Social Studies:  We are transitioning into our chapters on Native Americans.  The theme for these chapters is discovering how location of different groups and the resources they had affected their way of life.  Our physical maps were a perfect starting point for this study.  This week each student will be creating their own Origin story on a large piece of material.  They have 2 assignments due on Monday.  1 being a rough sketch of their Origin story.  The other a chart of 3 vocabulary words.  Both are in the workbook.
Next week I will elaborate on the Great Native American Dig project we will be starting!

6th Grade Literature:  6th graders have a sketch of the Seahawk due this week, either Tuesday or Wednesday.  Now that we have discussed setting, we will move on to characters.  We will be taking notes on characters this week and begin a character analysis activity in groups.  These presentations will be due next week.  We will continue with vocabulary words in class and a journal will be assigned this week.

Thank you for sharing your children with me.  I look forward to a great week ahead.
Blessings,
Mrs. Brown

Week of September 12-16

We are back to a normal week this week!  After last week's four day week plus our fitness day, we had trouble squeezing in everything that needed to be done.

Fitness day was a great thing for each student to try their hardest at the tests and set a baseline mark for improvement.  I was proud of the way the students encouraged each other.

It was great to see so many of you on Tuesday night.  If you were unable to attend I will post a copy of the information I handed out on this blog under the subject tab.  I am also happy to send home a paper copy.

5th Grade Language Arts:
Spelling:  Pre test will be on Monday this week and pages 20-23 will be assigned.  They will be due on Thursday as well as the final test.  I will collect spelling books every 2 weeks and record the scores from the pages.
Grammar:  We are a little behind in grammar but will try to catch up this week.  We reviewed some last week as we looked at the new skill.  Proofreading is due on Monday this week, since we didn't work on it until Friday and we will take the weekly assessment on Monday as well.  We will start the new skill on Tuesday.  This week's proofreading page 22 will be assigned on Thursday and due Friday.  Students are not allowed to go online and find the assignment, copy and paste it into Google classroom and then "fix" the errors.  They are to type or write the paragraph on their own, making needed corrections as they go.  I prefer this assignment done on Google classroom, but if you feel your child needs to write it instead, have them talk to me.

Literature:  We are more than halfway done with Wonder.    It has been a great book to read together.  This week we will work on vocabulary words in class and check them, and there will be 2 assignments on Google classroom, a journal and a quiz.  I will also post the assignment title and due date of these assignments on Educate, but the directions and assignment itself will be on Google classroom.

5th grade Social Studies:  We have spent 2 days on our 3D physical maps of the United States.  The groups have worked well together and the maps look great so far.  We will work one, maybe two more days in class on this project.  They will be hanging in the hallway when we are finished.
We will then continue on with chapter 2-3 about Native Americans.  We hope to be ready to begin our Native American research project and Artifact dig sometime in the next 2 weeks.  Details will follow.

6th Grade Literature:  We are doing our first Book Chat assignment where students give me information about the book they are reading on their own.  This assignment will happen every 2 weeks or so and will sometimes be with me, or on a blog or with other students.  This is to encourage and keep track of the books they are reading for the 40 Read Challenge.
We are on chapter 9-10 in True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and the book is beginning to take some twists and turns.  This week we will work on vocabulary words in class and complete a journal on Google classroom.  There will also be an assignment to sketch the Seahawk.  This assignment will be worth 25 points, and some time should be spent on it. They will be graded on how complete their sketch is.

Last week's character virtue was diligence.  I encourage you to continue to help your child with being diligent in their schoolwork.  It can be a challenge, but we are here to help them succeed.
Have a blessed week,
Mrs. Brown

Week of September 6-9

Happy Labor Day - I hope you have had a chance to enjoy the weekend and a day of rest!
It will be a busy week since we have 4 days.

I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday evening at Taste of Middle School.  This is an important night to receive an overview of your child's classes and hear straight from the teacher plans and procedures.  I enjoy sharing with the parents the exciting things we do in 5th grade and some important information about work and grading.  Please try to attend!

If you are unable to come, I will be placing a paper copy of the syllabus for the classes I teach in the 5th graders mailbox.  6th grade students can grab one if they wish.  I will also post on this blog under each tab the syllabus for a short time, so you may view it there as well.

5th Grade Language Arts:
Spelling:  We will begin spelling on Tuesday with our usual pretest and page assignment.  We will be working on pages 11-14 this week.  Because of the short week, pages and the final test will be on Friday. Students have been doing well on the final test.  It is important they finish the weekly pages as well, since they equal a test grade each week.
Grammar: 5th grade grammar is challenging.  Many have struggled with the weekly assessment the last two weeks.  Some of it is following directions.  We will continue to work on this in class.  I encourage them to highlight the directions as we go over them.  We will keep looking at our mistakes in class and reviewing.
This week we are on pages, 13-18.  Homework will be page 16 on Thursday night, due Friday.
Literature: We continue to read and discuss Wonder.   Many students have chosen to read ahead, which is fine.  We are working this week on vocabulary words which is done entirely in class.  I will be having a vocab checkpoint on Thursday to make sure they have kept up with the class.  We will have a character assignment on Google classroom this week. We will be taking our first Wonder quiz early next week.  On Friday we completed character puzzles for our own personal character.  We discussed if we were a character in the book, what would we want to be like.  Those will hang in the hallway.

5th grade social studies:  We have completed chapter one on Geography.  We will continue to review maps and geography all year.  We will use these skills a great deal as we move into chapter two on Native Americans.  The theme of chapter 2-3 is learning where Native Americans settled and how they lived based on the resources they had.  In order to bridge between chapter one and two, we will be making a 3-D Physical map of the US this week.  Look for progress on Twitter.
I will pass back the chapter one test on Tuesday.  Grades are posted.  Many students earned extra points by labeling extra locations on the map.  Grades were very good on this first test.

6th grade Literature:  The 40 Read Challenge is in full swing.  All 6th grade students are reporting to me a book they are reading.  We will have our first Reading chat assignment on Google classroom this week, where they will tell me about the book they are reading.
In class we continue to Read True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.  We are working in class on vocabulary for the book.  We will have our first quiz this week on Google classroom.  We will be taking notes on parts of a story and complete a project about the setting of the book next week.

As always please let me know if you have any questions about this week's work.  Continue to check Educate for posted grades and check anything that is missing.
Have a blessed week,
Hope to see you Tuesday evening!
Mrs. Brown