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!
