Week of September 30

We started the seventh week of school today.  At this time in the quarter, we are totally in the thick of things we are learning. In Reading, we had our first vocabulary quiz today.  Your child will create a study guide each Monday so he or she can study for the quiz the following Monday.  A few minutes each night ought to do it.  They have 10 new words to learn for the week.  In Writing, the students turned in their first personal narratives.  They were really good, a few made me laugh and a few made me a little teary.  Very sweet stories from their lives.  We are working on elements of narratives, such as sensory details, description, dialogue, and solid beginnings and endings.  Of course, spelling and sentence structure matter too, but they really take a back seat to the focus, organization and elaboration of the narrative.  We will continue with narrative writing this week, but we are taking time to share in author’s chair, which gives us a chance to really compliment our peers and learn from their work.  

In projects, we are planning our weather reports.  The students tracked the weather, now they will prepare a weather report from one of the cities they tracked.  They will need to make a chart and a graph to share with the class to explain the weather and trends for their climate zone.  They will also write a commercial for the design they made last week to reduce the impact of severe weather that might hit their city.  It has been fun to see the depth of their thinking as they work on this project.  

In other news, we are using Thera-bands on our chairs to keep wiggle feet moving and bodies still to work.  Personally, I think they are great.  The kids are doing well with this new feature in their seating.

Thanks to all of you for responding to your child in their parent journals, for purchasing supplies for their projects, for studying with your child, and most of all, for sending them here to our classroom happy and ready to learn each day.  This is a wonderful place to be, and each child (and family) contributes to that!

Week of September 23

We are off to a busy start of another week.  We have a few exciting things going on in the classroom this week.  In Reading, we are starting to read the book Tuck Everlasting.  This is a great book that should prompt some deep discussions in the classroom.  This book is very well-written; it will probably help your child as a writer as well!  We will use it to study figurative language. Your child will have a literature journal to fill out in the classroom each day, as well as ten vocabulary words each week.  Starting next Monday, we will have a quiz each Monday on the previous week’s words.  The students made a study guide, so they can study this week to prepare.

In writing, we are writing personal narratives, true stories from our lives.  We are revising, editing and completing our final drafts of our first narrative this week.  In projects, we have been learning about severe weather. This is the final week for your student to track the weather for his or her chosen city.  We will begin building the students' designs in the second half of the week.  The students are working in teams to build something to lessen the impact of a weather hazard in their chosen city.  We are learning some really interesting facts about weather.  

Life is good here in Oasis Academy’s fifth grade!  Thank you for all you do to support your child’s education.

Coming up this week

Welcome back after what sounds like a very busy weekend for our fifth grade families!  In our Community Circle this morning, most of the students said how tired they were after the events of their weekends.  Busy families! This week we will be starting our small group instruction in reading, writing personal narratives in writing, and tracking the weather in cities from around the world.  I appreciate how so many of you are helping your child find the books he or she is interested in.  With no school library, it takes a little more effort, and I appreciate your trips to the public library or making book purchases for your child.  Most of the students have books they are really excited to tell the class about.  That makes me so happy!  In writing, we are trying to live like writers by noticing the small moment stories of our lives.  We will be working with techniques to make these stories come alive with detail and importance.  In projects, we have been learning weather and climate vocabulary, and today we got in pairs and chose two cities to track and graph the weather.

This weather tracking will be done for 14 days, so this will have to be done at home on the weekends.  We have used Weather.com and we are graphing the high temperature each day, plus recording a few words about the weather, like sunny, cloudy, rainy, etc.  We will be learning about extreme weather conditions this week and designing a product to reduce the impact of severe weather.  Your child may come home Thursday with a few needed supplies for next week.  Also, we will have a test on the vocabulary words next week, so ask your child about these words at home.

We are halfway through the first quarter and the routines of the classroom and school day are getting established.  I sure appreciate the nice manners I see from the students in the classroom.  They are really a kind and considerate class.  I am really enjoying them.

Last thing:  Count Day is Thursday Sept. 19.  Attendance is really important on this day.  It is a street clothes day and students will be rewarded with a movie and popcorn in the afternoon.  Please make every effort to have your child at school this day.

Thank you for all you do to support our classroom learning!

Moving right along...

Looking ahead to this week, we have a walking field trip on Wednesday at 9:30 am.  We will go to hear the governor speak at the city’s 9-11 memorial.  This meets a Social Studies standard about why cities have memorials and monuments.  We have plenty of chaperones going with us.  Thank you for volunteering.  Please make sure your child has comfortable walking shoes that day, along with sunscreen and a hat.  We will be back in plenty of time for lunch.   

Parent journals are going well, thank you for responding.  I realize that this is kind of like homework for you on the weekends, but I wish you could see how delighted your student is to read your letter in the classroom.  Thank you.  We are really encouraging the use of writing as real-life communication.  We started learning about prepositional phrases today in writing, and we will wrap up our study of parts of speech this week.  Then we will go into a narrative writing unit.  

In projects, we are learning some vocabulary so we can begin a new project on weather and climate.  Your child will need to watch the weather in a few cities for several days.  

Things are moving right along in fifth grade this year.  Have a great week!

Thank You and Another Walking Field Trip

Last Wednesday, we had a great walking field trip to Maine Street.  We learned a lot of interesting facts about the history of our community and we got to practice making a simple community map while we walked.  I hope your student has shared something he or she learned with you.  

That trip could not have been as successful without many people.  Thank you to Cari Norcutt and Monyca Jensen for providing water and Dilly bars.  It was a hot day and we were sure glad to have both of those!   Thank you also to our chaperones, Racquel Feest, Dusty Casey, Cherilee Sorensen, David and Colleen Colburn, and Katie Dahl.  Having the kids in small groups made it possible to cover more ground in the short time we had on Maine Street.  Just another reason why I love Oasis Academy - great parents who are so willing to help!  

We will have another walking field trip on September 11.  One of our Social Studies standards is to recognize ways communities use memorials, so this is the perfect opportunity to go hear the Mayor of our town and the guest speaker, Governor Sandoval, speak at this ceremony.  If you are interested in walking with us and attending the ceremony, please email me.  We will leave at 9:30.  The ceremony starts at 10 am on Wed. Sept. 11.

I hope your all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend!