5-2 Updates ~ 02/21

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

What beautiful weather we had yesterday!  I hope you all had a chance to enjoy our little taste of spring :)

Important Dates

Erin's Law Presentation ~ Wednesday, 2/24

Advanced Placement Testing (Math + ALA) ~ March 14-16th ~ As I mentioned in an email last week, if your child scored above the 80%ile on the Math MAPS test and you would like your child tested for advanced placement, please follow the link in my email to appeal for testing.  If you have any questions at all about this process, please do not hesitate to ask - the process is different this year, and there may be misunderstandings.  Please let me know if you choose to have your child take the Math Advanced Placement Test so I am aware.  Thank you!

Progress Reports ~ Friday, 3/11

Parent Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, 3/17 & Friday, 3/18

Spring Break ~ 3/21 - 3/28

Visit to Thomas/South - Wednesday, 4/20 - Students will visit the middle schools with teachers during the school day.

Incoming 6th grade Parent & Student Orientation - Thursday, 4/21 - evening event, time TBD

Math

We continue our work with exponential and scientific notation and order of operations in Unit 7.  We will finish the unit by the end of the week, and will begin reviewing for the Unit 7 Assessment next week.  The Unit 7 Assessment is scheduled for Wednesday, 3/2.  If your child does not have automaticity with their math facts, please have them continue to practice at home.  It is critical that these foundational skills are mastered this year, or future concepts will be quite challenging.  Students would also benefit from practicing Unit 7 skills on Khan Academy at home!

Science
We wrapped up our Energy Unit with tons of energy sharing our Rube Goldberg inventions.  What fun they had sharing their energy transfers!!  Just look at all the fun in the pictures below :)

Social Studies

We returned to social studies on Friday with a pre-test on Unit 14, The Constitution.  How timely to be in an election year!  We will be learning about the 3 branches of government this week and creating a Branches of Government project in class.  The Unit 14 Assessment is scheduled for Monday, 2/29.

Reading

Your children should have brought home their Fiction Unit Assessment for a sign and return this weekend.  Some students also chose to bring home re-take work this weekend to improve their scores.  Due to the trimester ending this week, they will need to take the re-test by Friday.  

We also began our Poetry Unit on Friday with a discussion about our likes and dislikes of poetry.  I was so impressed with how thoughtful students were about poetry, and how many of them enjoy the creativity found in poetry.  Many of the kids are looking forward to exploring this genre!

Writing

This week, students will begin to write their final Response to Fiction essays.  They will be working on these essays primarily in class.  Look for the graded rubrics to come home next week!

“Children must be taught HOW to think, not WHAT to think.” 
     ~ Margaret Mead

Cheers ~

Mrs. Theresa Fowler

Happy 11th birthday, Catherine!!

5-2 Updates ~ 02/15

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!! to our wonderful room moms (and all the other moms who showed up to help!) for a delightful Valentine's Day Party!!  What a relaxing and enjoyable afternoon we had together playing fun games, making adorable crafts, and eating DELICIOUS chocolate fondue!!  An additional thank you to Mrs. Dattilo for taking pictures during the party...I've posted them below this post so you can see how much fun we really had :)

Thank you to all of you who made me feel so loved with all those "sweet" treats - I appreciate them so much!!  And one more thank you...after the party, I found an adorable tin of chocolates with all of your children's beautiful faces carefully placed with chocolates in candy cup liners.  What a sweet surprise when I took my first chocolate out!!  Whoever took all that time, also made sure to get each child's signature in the tin for me - I don't know who you are, but you made me feel so loved!!  Thank you :)

Important Dates

CogAT Makeups ~ If your child missed any of the CogAT tests last week, they will be scheduled for makeups this week.  Unfortunately, since we are under strict time constraints, I don't have a schedule for those makeups.  We will schedule them when proctors are available.

Incoming 6th Grade Parent/Principal Coffees

All Schools:  Wednesday, February 17th at 7:00pm ~ Thomas Middle School
Thomas:  Thursday, February 18th at 9:15AM
South:  Monday, 2/29 at 9:45 am & 6:30pm, Thursday, 3/10 at 1:30pm, Wednesday, 3/16 at 9:45am

Advanced Placement Testing (Math + ALA) ~ March 14-16th ~ As I mentioned in an email last week, if your child scored above the 80%ile on the Math MAPS test and you would like your child tested for advanced placement, please follow the link in my email to appeal for testing.  If you have any questions at all about this process, please do not hesitate to ask - the process is different this year, and there may be misunderstandings.  Please let me know if you choose to have your child take the Math Advanced Placement Test so I am aware.  Thank you!

Progress Reports ~ Friday, 3/11

Parent Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, 3/17 & Friday, 3/18

Spring Break ~ 3/21 - 3/28

Visit to Thomas/South - Wednesday, 4/20 - Students will visit the middle schools with teachers during the school day.

Incoming 6th grade Parent & Student Orientation - Thursday, 4/21 - evening event, time TBD

Math

We are working with exponential and scientific notation in Unit 7, as well as learning the order of operations.  If your child does not have automaticity with their math facts, please have them continue to practice at home.  It is critical that these foundational skills are mastered this year, or future concepts will be quite challenging.  Students would also benefit from practicing Unit 7 skills on Khan Academy at home!

Science

Everyone is excited to return to designing and building their Rube Goldberg inventions this week in science!  We will be designing, drawing and labeling our Rube Goldberg inventions on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the big class reveal scheduled for Thursday!  This will draw our Energy Unit to a close, and we will return to Social Studies on Friday with an introduction to the Constitution of the Unites States - a timely topic given all that is happening in the news lately!

Reading

To be sure students are fully prepared for the final assessment, we will spend two more days working on prompts similar to the ones they will encounter on the final test.  Our Fiction Unit Assessment is scheduled for Thursday, 2/18.

Writing

We continued to work on identifying evidence to support our claims about character traits in The Liberation of Gabriel King in our WEX lessons.  We will begin working on our final Response to Fiction Essays in two weeks.

“Children do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”      ~ Teddy Roosevelt

Cheers ~

Mrs. Theresa Fowler

Happy 1/2 birthday, Audrey!

Happy Birthday, Sophia!!

5-2 Updates ~ 02/06

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend!

Important Dates

CogAT Administration ~ February 8th - 12th ~ The Cognitive Abilities Test will be given to all 5th grade students this year, and will be used with the MAPS test to determine students' eligibility to take the Advanced Language Arts placement test.

The scheduled test dates are:

Monday, 2/8 11:10-12:10

Thursday, 2/11 11:10-12:10

Friday, 2/12 11:10-12:10

Valentine's Day Celebration ~ Friday, February 12th ~ Our Room Moms are hard at work planning a fun celebration for your kiddos!!  THANK YOU for all your hard work! Please see the email I sent home yesterday for details about the celebration.  Specifically, please note:

Due to severe and life threatening allergies, we are asking that you DO NOT INCLUDE ANY FOOD OR CANDY ITEMS with your child's individual Valentines. There are many clever and creative alternatives to food items, including pencils, tattoos, stickers, & bubbles... but the nicest way to say "Happy Valentine's Day" is to write a nice note! 

Incoming 6th Grade Parent/Principal Coffees

All Schools:  Wednesday, February 17th at 7:00pm ~ Thomas Middle School
Thomas:  Thursday, February 18th at 9:15AM
South:  Monday, 2/29 at 9:45 am & 6:30pm, Thursday, 3/10 at 1:30pm, Wednesday, 3/16 at 9:45am

Advanced Placement Testing (Math + ALA) ~ March 14-16th

Progress Reports ~ Friday, 3/11

Parent Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, 3/17 & Friday, 3/18

Spring Break ~ 3/21 - 3/28

Visit to Thomas/South - Wednesday, 4/20 - Students will visit the middle schools with teachers during the school day.

Incoming 6th grade Parent & Student Orientation - Thursday, 4/21 - evening event, time TBD

Math

We finished Unit 6 this week and taking the assessment on Monday, 2/8.  We have focused on finding data points using line plots, stem and leaf plots, and bar graph, and we learned to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators.  We took a Unit 6 quiz today to determine how prepared the students are for the test - I was impressed with how well your children did on the quiz!  Ask your child how they scored on this quiz - if you would like to see an electronic copy of the quiz, let me know and I will send you one.  Your child can prepare for the assessment by studying the review and these concepts on Khan Academy.

Science

Due to the CogAT testing next week, we will have an interrupted science schedule.  Students were assigned the review for the Energy Assessment today - we will go through the review on Tuesday, and the Final Energy Assessment will be on Wednesday, 2/10.  Your child can also log on to Spelling City to practice the vocabulary introduced in this unit over the weekend to help prepare for the test.  

Students were also introduced to Rube Goldberg inventions this week - machines that use several energy transfers to accomplish a simple task.  They were challenged to create a Rube Goldberg of their own with at least 6 steps and 2 different types of energy transfers.  Your children were given the option to either work independently on this project or in teams - they brainstormed their projects today.  Expect them to come home today requesting to bring in a few toys for their trial run next week.  They will work in teams to create and label a Rube Goldberg diagram, and then they will have the chance to create the actual machine to demonstrate for their classmates.  They are SUPER excite to create their machines!!  

Here is a link to the video I shared in class to demonstrate a Rube Goldberg machine - your children enjoyed watching it, they may want to share it with you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Reading

We continued our lesson on how conflict changes characters in the fiction stories this week, and learned to identify different literary elements on a plot diagram - characters & conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.  This is challenging for many students so we've worked with several different texts to build their skills.  Since we've spent a little additional time on this strategy, our Fiction Unit Final Assessment is put off for another week - we will most likely take it on Wednesday, 2/17 as we still need to cover theme and elements of drama next week.

Writing

We continued to work on identifying evidence to support our claims about character traits in The Liberation of Gabriel King in our WEX lessons.  This week we focused on finding supporting evidence in sensory details and how to identify emotions in dialogue and narration.  Next week, we will focus more on the grammar of showing with direct quotes and how to use literary verb tense.

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”      ~ Angela Schwindt