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Here's What's Happening...

English/Language Arts: Students will be wrapping up their narratives this week.  On Monday, they will use a narrative checklist to evaluate their work.  They will then have the opportunity to exchange their work with a peer, who will also use the narrative checklist to evaluate their partner's work.  This helps students identify any content changes that they may need to make.  The rest of the week, each day we will focus on a particular aspect of grammar that students will proofread and edit their narrative for.  Students will also work in their literature circle groups to complete the group book project, and complete Word Work List 7 Slides.

Science: We will continue our work with the book Matter Makes It All Up.  Students will discuss the evidence they gathered for the question "How do animals grow?", as well as define the words "matter" and "molecule."  We will begin to create a chart to keep track of all the different kinds of matter that we will learn about in this unit.  After that, students will complete the anticipation guide for this book.  Then we will move forward into the next lessons where we discuss scientific arguments, and the idea of creating a claim to answer a question, as well as the evidence needed to support the claim.  They will also be intoduced to the on-line simulation for this unit, and use it to collect additional evidence to help understand how animals grow.

Social Studies: Students will begin to prepare for the colony project by brainstorming ideas of what they believe leads to building a successful colony.

Advanced Math:  We continue to develop the strategy of using common denominators to divide fractions.  Then, students will expand their toolbox with some additional strategies for dividing fractions, including the standard algorithm.  They will have the opportunity to practice dividing fractions in context of word problem situations.  We end the week by engaging in some activities to review the first two sections of this unit in preparation for a quiz next week.

Important Info:

Winter Assessments Continue!

Students will take the Reading Informational Text Common Assessment on Tuesday, January 25th. These assessments are designed to measure progress on the fifth grade priority standards. In this common assessment, students will read a piece of informational text, answer some multiple choice questions about it, and then use the RACES strategy to write an open response. As always, I simply ask that students give their best effort!

Schedule of Events

• Monday, January 24th: Monday Choir, 2:45-3:45pm
• Tuesday, January 25th: Tuesday Choir, 2:45-3:45pm
• Wednesday, January 26th: American Eagle Theater Class, 2:45-3:45pm
• Thursday, January 27th: Young Rembrandts, 2:45-3:45pm