Reminders & Classroom News

March 2nd: Sweetheart Dance! 6-8 p.m.💞

March 18th-22nd: Spring Break 🏝️

April 15th: Young AmeriTowne Field Trip 💼

Young AmeriTowne

The fifth-grade classes will be taking a field trip to Young AmeriTowne on Monday, April 15, 2024.

Young AmeriTowne is a unique hands-on curriculum in free enterprise that introduces students to the basic principles of our economic system, banking, and government. Students will have the opportunity to run their own town after receiving preliminary instruction in the classroom. We will be teaching activities and lessons designed to help students learn the concepts of the free enterprise system. In addition, students will learn about banking and how to use their own checking accounts. Other lessons include how the government works, developing laws, and even organizing primary and general elections for mayor and judge of Young AmeriTowne. There are different shops that will be run completely by the students. Each shop serves a unique purpose in the economy. Some of the shops include a radio station, a snack shop, and a TV station just to name a few.

BUS AND FIELD TRIP COST

Please go into My School Bucks to pay the

field trip fee and to sign the permission slip.

Please do this by Friday, April 5, 2024.

LINK to pay in My School Bucks (MSB Parent App if on phone)

Our wonderful PTO contributed $750 to help with the cost of transportation!

VOLUNTEER INFORMATION

Volunteer Opportunity 1

This is an exciting opportunity for our fifth-grade students. We will need volunteers to conduct YAT job interviews at Heritage Elementary on Friday, April 5th from 1:20-2:55 PM.

Volunteer Opportunity 2

We will also need volunteers on the day of the field trip who can meet us at Belmar Young AmeriTowne. Volunteers will be expected to arrive a half hour early the day of the field trip at the facility. You will need to use your own transportation. In addition, field trip volunteers will also need to come to Heritage on Friday, April 12th from 1:20 pm to 2:20 pm to help facilitate shop meetings.
Please be aware that, per Young Ameritowne policy, you are not placed in the same shop as your child.

If there is an overflow of volunteers, we will conduct a lottery. If you would like to volunteer for this field trip, please sign up using the following sign-up genius link. If interested, please sign up on the Sign Up Genius by Friday, March 22nd by 8:30 AM. We plan on letting you all know by the end of March 22nd who was chosen in the lottery so you have time to plan.

Sincerely,

Jillian Holtz, Kristie Peters, Erin Howard, and Lisa Livesay

WHat we are Learning

We are moving onto a new essential question in our Wonders program: How do we explain what happened in the past? The students will be reading different articles that tell about artifacts from past civilizations and what they can tell us about the people from that era. The students will be working on identifying the Author's Claim based on text evidence. We also continue to enjoy reading our novel Front Desk. Ask your child about the latest that they've read!

We are jumping around a bit and are investigating Topic 11 which covers the formula for finding the volume of a 3D object. The students seem to have a good grasp on the new concept and will be applying it to real-world problem solving. This is a short unit, so the end of topic test will be Friday, March 8th.

We have begun our next science unit on the solar system. We have had a lot of fun exploring the answers to these questions:

Who set the first clock? (We made homemade sundials and were able to go outside and tell the time!)
How can the sun tell you the season?
Why do the stars change with the seasons? (The students looked up a start chart on the day they were born to see the constellations that could be seen that day.)

We also did a fun activity learning about why we have such a thing as a Leap Year on Thursday, February 29th. This tied in perfectly to our unit! Check out some great pictures from some of our experiments from the past week:

I was very impressed by the quality of writing in their last Fan Fiction assignment. They were to rewrite an event from Front Desk from a different character's perspective. They did amazing! Please feel free to look in Google Classroom at their scores and the comments I attached.

We are moving on to Response to Text. This is where we will read a selection and respond to questions about the text. The hope is to get the students to answer thoughtfully and thoroughly when they must give a written response during CMAS testing.