January Newsletter

Time has flown in fifth grade this year! It's hard to believe that it is already 2020! Throughout this year we have accomplished a lot, overcome many challenges, and will continue working towards our goals.

So far:

In writing, we finished our literary essay unit. Everyone wrote their literary essay on the TMB Football Club Panyee short film. We found a main idea from the film, wrote three reasons to support our claims, and used evidence from the text when forming our essays. We had many writing conferences, during which we edited and revised our essays. Upon our completion of literary essay we started thinking about the new year! Every student created their "Word Goal" for the New Year. In 2020 we will move into "argument and advocacy." We will learn how to write a supported argument beginning with a claim and then supporting it with research-based reasons and evidence.

In math, we are in the midst of a context unit which requires us to use ratio tables and rates to figure various amounts and costs of bird seed and cat food. We are making math posters to improve our thinking and learning, and to help us articulate and share our math strategies. We will soon be launching a new unit on fractions!

In Social Studies, we have mostly focused on learning about Christopher Columbus. We learned that he was looking for a new route to the Indies since the Silk Road had been closed down. He thought that he could sail around the world and get to the Indies faster than he would have if he had taken the Silk Road. He didn’t even know that there was a whole continent that was in his way. He asked for ships and goods from kings and queens. Not many people believed him, but King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave him a few ships and some goods. So he traveled to go around the World to the Indies, as he thought. When came to the New World, he set up settlements. Christopher Columbus had only brought a little crew, but he slowly took over and brought more people to the New World. Learning about Early Exploration has been very fun and we are looking forward to starting our science unit about Matter when we come back from Winter break!

In reading, we researched non-fiction texts. Each research group learned about an ecosystem (tundra, desert, wetlands, ocean, woodlands, etc.) as their non-fiction topic, gained knowledge on that topic, created slideshows, and then taught the class about their ecosystem.

Every day in 5th grade is busy and enriching, a lot of fun too!