5th Grade Weekly Update

Mrs. Livesay

August 21-August 25

Reminders & Classroom News

August 28: Picture Day

September 4: Labor Day--no school

September 8: PTO meeting 8:30 am. in Library

September 13:  Fund Run!

September 29:  Donuts with Dudes


PTO Membershp!

Looking for an easy way to get involved with minimal effort?  Join PTO at Heritage!  It's only $25 per family and every cent goes back to supporting our students.  We are currently holding a contest that can earn our class special themed parties: popcorn, pizza, etc. and would love to have 100% membership in our class!  Here's the link to the PTO webpage to process your membership payemnt.  Thank you!

Homework Expectations

I wanted to make sure all of you had the correct expectations for homework.  Homework will be given out Monday-Thursday on a regular basis.  You can expect the following each night:

There will definitely be times when your child will be bringing additional assignments home, but this will be based on how they utilize classroom time and if they need to complete assignments at home.  I have a designated time at the end of each day when we fill out our school planner together.  They are instructed to write down all of their assignments they need to get done at that time.  On a rare occasion, they will have homework over the weekend; however, that will be few and far between and mostly occur when work did not get done throughout the week.  Please let me know if you have questions or concerns about this.

WHat we are Learning

Our focus in our Wonders curriculum has been on cause and effect.  We read a story called Camping With the President, which tells the story of President Roosevelt and his time camping with John Muir in Yosemite and how it changed his perspective on nature and how to preserve its resources.  The students looked for cause and effect examples throughout the story.  We also read chapter 2 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and are continuing to work on backing up our thinking by citing text evidence.

We are continuing to work on our Class Pet essays.  I am seeing a lot of growth with detail writing and keeping our writing focused on our original claims.  The students had mini lessons on transition words and learned about the 3 elements that need to be included in our introduction.

This week concluded our Topic 1 on Understanding Place Value.  This unit is a tough one since it is going over many topics (rounding, sequencing, expanded form) and using decimals, which had only been introduced briefly in 4th grade.  Our unit test showed a few holes, so we will visit those few concepts over the firs few days next week.


We continue with our Regions of the US unit.  The kids have been assigned a particular region to research and are in the process of completing a poster on their region.  These are turning out so great! We will present the posters at the end of the week. We also have S.E.L. (Social Emotional Learning) with Mrs. Mitchell Monday and Tuesday.