Please remind your student to bring their purple folder back to class.

• Check out what is going on in counseling!

• Family volunteering is important at JCCS. You are welcome to come anytime your schedule allows. 

• Volunteers are welcome in the classroom to help with math, science, social studies, reading, writing, and hiking. See the Volunteer link for times:  https://signup.com/client/invitation2/secure/64833852033/false#/invitation

What are we working on?

Science: Space, Gravity, Earth's rotation / shadows. We will start our unit on Friday, unless we have extra time earlier in the week.

Reading: 

Reading Challenge: Students are challenged to read 19 books this semester (including picture books). We will have time in school to read, but students should read 20 minutes a day at home; they can take their book from the classroom library home with them anytime.

I hope your student enjoyed reading their independent reading over break!

We're going to finish up our Where the Mountain Meets the Moon unit by talking a little about the theme before moving into Wild Robot and Ravens Writes on Thursday and Friday. 

Please read or listen to Wild Robot with your student. Everyone reading the same book is a nice way to build community. The majority of our Wild Robot reading will fall outside of class time because our Ravens Writes writing unit will be our priority for the last 7 weeks of school.

Reading Strategy of the Week: Theme & Summarizing text / Wrap up Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Writing: Short to medium-length journal prompts and cursive practice will be a consistent activity after lunch. 

Grammar or Morphology:  Suffix review and decoding words that are open, closed, VCE syllables, and learning the meaning of prefixes: Non-, Mis-, Dis-, Un-, -ion (-tion or -sion), -able, en-. There are many spelling rules involving -ion that are confusing. We will talk about some root words that are frequent used in other words such as spect (spectacle, spectacular, inspect . . . ) and ject (eject, inject. . . ).

Math: Time and Money $$ 

5th graders: We have a lot to cover in math before the end of the year, practicing assigned activities in i-Ready after school is going to be very important - look for multiplying decimals, adding and subtracting decimals, and general multi-digit multiplication and division problems. This added practice gives students the repetition they need to help store this information in their long-term memory.

 
ALL students: Memorize their multiplication facts! This frees up their cognitive load (brain space) for more complex math.

Social Studies: We are learning about the lead-up to the French & Indian War and should end Friday with a mock trail of George Washington. He signed a confession for killing someone. The problem: the confession was written in French and Washington didn't know he was signing a confession.

THIS PROJECT SHOULD BE COMPLETED:

Students should choose a historical figure from the 1500s to 1700s who played a part in the creation of America. The rubric and worksheets to help students organize their thinking are available at this link. We had 3 more presentations this week, and should finish presentations in the first week back from Spring Break.

Students can read their studies weekly at home at https://online.studiesweekly.com/login.  I can send you their username and password if you need them. The online version gives students the option to have the newspaper read to them, which can be very helpful for processing the information.