November

End of First Trimester & Conferences

One third of the school year is behind us and so much has been accomplished thus far. We are very proud of fifth graders for what they have achieved and the amount of maturity and growth they have shown over the past several weeks. 

At conferences, we reviewed progress and setting goals for the second trimester. Emphasis was placed on areas of growth so far with discussion of areas for focus and improvement, including but not limited to: academics, social skills, emotional states, and life skills. We hope you found the conversations productive.

We recognize fifth grade as a significant and crucial leap forward for all students. Expectations for behavior, effort, productivity, responsibility, and accountability are higher to better equp students for middle school and beyond. This transition is more challenging for some than others. Nevertheless, it is more important for students to  experience some discomfort and productive struggle that fuels growth rather than lacking rigor that leads to complacency.

Planned or Unplanned Absences

We are often informed by parents of planned absences for students in advance of things like sports tournaments, out of town family visits, and family trips. Additionally, we hear from you (or students themselves) when students will be absent due to illness. We greatly appreciate knowing about these absences in advance as it helps us with our planning ahead and it demonstrates the priority you place on education. 

However, we would like to point out two things: 

• Depending on circumstances, we may or may not be able to supply missed work in advance. Planning ahead for a day or two is feasible. But planning ahead for several days to a week, or more, is challenging. While we pride ourselves on our ability to plan, our plans are constantly shifting and changing due to the variation of the pace of learning and unanticipated disruptions to our learning time, making it difficult to supply you with work for students to do while traveling.  

• Pulling together an assortment of assignments to be worked on while away from school does not replace what occurs in class. During class time, students participate in direct instruction from teachers on important concepts, teacher-guided practice with those concepts, collaboration with peers, discussions, and question and answer sessions. And that's only a short list! There is much more that occurs in the classroom that cannot be replicated. So, the answer to the question we receive often, "Will my student miss anything?" The answer is an emphatic "YES!"

We appreciate your requests and will honor them to the best of our ability, but please understand the difficulty it can pose to teachers and student learning.

Language Arts

This month, after a few weeks with emphasis on nonfiction text, reading focus will return to realistic fiction. In general, realistic fiction provides us a basis for what it means to be human. But specifically it does the following:

Develops comprehension and writing skills:  Since the stories mirror real life, students can more easily make connections which improves reading comprehension and idea generation for writing.

Makes reading relatable and engaging:  The stories feel familiar because they could actually happen. Readers often see themselves, their friends, or their families in the characters and settings.

Builds empathy:  Realistic fiction helps readers understand how other people think and feel. Since the characters face real-life problems, readers can imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes.

Expands social and emotional understanding: Realistic fiction helps readers explore friendships, family relationships, fairness, and other social issues in a safe way.

Improves problem-solving and decision-making:  Characters in realistic fiction often face challenges similar to those in real life. Seeing how they handle them can give readers ideas for how to face their own situations.

For our next novel study, we have chosen books with characters who have various personal challenges and/or neurodivergence. Reading about these characters helps us build empathy and expand social and emotional understanding. 

In addition, our literary element focus is on conflict and resolution. Conflicts are external and internal, and very often internal conflicts cause external and vice versa. Reading about relatable characters in engaging stories helps us work on problem-solving and decision-making in order to resolve these conflicts.

In our novel studies, we will study the ideas of acceptance alongside conflict resolution as avenues authors use to develop themes of stories. Our reading and writing in response to reading will lead to understanding themes and using evidence to support claims about themes.

Writing

Specific writing instruction this month will center around CER: Claim, Evidence, Reading. This is the structured, expository writing we use for science and social studies. Students make a claim about a scientific phenomenon or historical event, use evidence to support that claim, and use logical reasoning to explain how the evidence supports the claim.

In addition this month, we will use the TIQA structure in response to literature:  Topic, Introduction, Quote, Analysis. This structure requires students to draw a conclusion from their reading, introduce a quotation with context as evidence of that conclusion, directly quote from the text, and then analyze that quote to explain how it supports the conclusion drawn.

Math

We wrapped up Unit 3 this past week which focused on the order of operations in solving multi-step equations. In addition, students learned to express mathematical situations in numeric form using parentheses, braces, and brackets to group operations.

Unit 4 is our first study of fractions, with specific emphasis on adding and subtracing fractions with unlike denominators. Following is a list of important concepts to be learned:

• Foundational concept of fractions:  parts of a whole

• Foundational concept of mixed numbers and improper fractions

• Equivalent fractions

• Adding and subtracting simple fractions with unlike denominators using multiple strategies

• Adding and subtracting mixed numbers and improper fractions with unlike denominators

Science:  Earth, Sun, and Stars

We will begin a short unit in science with a focus on Earth's rotation around its axis and its revolution around the sun. Students will learn the effects these phenomena have on our lives on Earth, such as day/night, shadows and seasonal changes.

Next, we turn to the sun and study its status as a star and how it compares to other stars across the Milky Way galaxy and beyond. We will learn about the classification of stars and the life cycle of stars. Students will review the make up of our solar system, including classification of planets and the relative sizes and distances of planets.

Finally, we study the concept of gravity and the gravitational force between all objects. Students will discover the difference between weight and mass, where mass is constant but weight depends upon gravitational force. Students will learn that size of object and the distance away determines the gravitational force.

Important Events

Please see the Calendar Page within this website for upcoming important events.  

Within the calendar you can find important events, event timeframes, and additional brief notes about many events.