October 24

Just a few reminders: Parent teacher conferences are this coming week, October 27th and 29th.  Please check Sign Up Genius for your time, or feel free to email me if you don't remember.  I would happy to let you know.  Also, the Halloween party will be Thursday, the 30th, and there will be no school on Friday, the 31st.  We will be going on a field trip to Cahokia Mounds on November 7th.  Permission slips went home with their mail on Tuesday, so please return them this week if you haven't yet.

Today we had Ability Awareness Day.  We traveled around to four different presenters who taught us about different disabilities.  We met a lady named Katie who shared her story about an accident that caused her to become a paraplegic.  She is a very funny and interesting lady, and the kids really enjoyed meeting her.  We discussed learning disabilities, depression, and physical/motor disabilities in our other sessions.  It was a great interactive way for students to learn to appreciate differences and to realize how much we all have in common.  Be sure to ask your child what they learned about today!

In reading, we are currently learning how an author's point of view and perspective affect how a story is told.  We reviewed the difference between first and third person, and we also learned the difference between third person limited and third person omniscient.  This week students practiced writing from each of the different points of view.  Students looked at the same picture and were given a certain point of view from which to tell the story.  It was interesting for them to apply what they knew about point of view in their writing!

We finished multiplication at the end of the quarter, and we have been focusing on division.  We are currently on Chapter 3.  Homework is being assigned most nights and goes along with the lesson from the day.  Everyone is being very responsible about completing this and returning it to school, which is great!  In our math centers, we typically do activities and real world problem solving that apply to the previous chapter.  This way we are constantly reviewing concepts and vocabulary that was previously learned.  We will be continuing with division for the next few weeks since Chapter 4 covers division, as well.

In science, we started learning about water and the water cycle.  We did several demonstrations and hands on activities to review and reinforce different concepts relating to the water cycle.  We evaporated water in class, did an experiment to create condensation, and actually made it rain in the classroom (on a very small scale).  Below are pictures of the students as they discovered condensation on the inside of their cups!  We will also be learning about weather and weather tools in this unit.

Students finished writing and publishing their personal narratives, and these will shared at parent teacher conferences.  Everyone participated in a 5th grade writing celebration on Tuesday.  Each student displayed their writing on their desk, and we went to each classroom for about 10 minutes.  Everyone read a few pieces from each class and left a compliment for each one they read.  It was a  fun way to share their hard work with peers from our own class and from the other 5th grade classrooms.  Next week we will be starting informational writing.

I look forward to seeing you all at conferences!