Back to Normal

Greetings!  

We are back to a normal week this week after our testing last week.  What we are looking forward to this week:  returning to our book club schedule, having literacy blocks to read and write, finishing our opinion papers about when you deserve a trophy, finding our best learning style through a multiple intelligence survey,  choosing a book project that matches our learning style, writing a space picture book in Projects, hearing the second half of The One and Only Ivan, and playing kickball with the official rules on these lovely afternoons.  This is a great time of the school year and we have lots to learn in the last weeks of school.  Our schedule of work will remain the same until the very last days of school.  

On the horizon, we have the Nevada State Writing Proficiency test the week of May 5.  Also, weather permitting, we will be painting the playground that week as well.  I am still looking for a few volunteers for that project.  Please email me if you are available.  I can't give you a solid date until we check the weather, but I'm aiming for May 8 from 1:15 - 3:30 and hoping to get 4 or 5 parents to help.  Should be fun, right? 

Have a great week.  These fifth graders are awesome and I love being with them every day!

CRT Testing

Hello Fifth Grade families, 

You will be happy to know that our first day of CRT testing went very well.  These are the things I noticed that impressed me:  all students at school on time, kids ready to work hard, plenty of nutritious snacks (thank you, parents!), many students working hard for two or more hours, and students checking and double-checking their work.  I was happy with the effort I saw today!  Now we need to be ready to do it all over again tomorrow!  No homework this week, just the early bedtime and healthy breakfast.

Our testing schedule looks like this:  

Tuesday:  a.m. - Reading Part 2       p.m. -  Math Part 1

Wednesday: a.m. - Science Part 1 p.m. -  Math Part 2

Thursday: a.m. -  Science Part 2 p.m. - no testing

Then we will look ahead to the State Writing testing the week of May 5. Thanks for all your efforts to make our testing week smooth and successful!

Eclipse and Testing

We ended our school day today with a short video on the Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse that is happening tonight.  This is the first of four, a tetrad of total eclipses, each occurring six months apart.  It is interesting, but of course, to see it, you have to be up at midnight.  It should be visible somewhere between 11:00 pm and 12:30 am.  There was a lot of talk among the students of setting alarms and getting up in the middle of the night, so this is just advance warning in case this discussion arises in your homes.    

Another important matter on the horizon is CRT testing which will begin first thing next week.  Mrs. Anderson is arranging snacks to be brought in on testing days, which is every day next week.  We will not have our typical homework that week, but I am telling the fifth graders that they are to get to bed at least 30 minutes earlier to be rested for their tests each day.  Thank you for helping them be ready.  I don’t like to spend too much time talking about testing in the classroom.  It is a fine line between stressing them out and having them take the tests seriously.  On an individual level, the test data is used for a full school year to determine what each student knows and still needs to learn.  It is important that the results are a fair representation of what your child knows.  Please encourage your child to take the time to do his or her best.  

Have a great week and contact me with any concerns or questions.  Thanks for all you do to make our classroom run smoothly!