Go Out And Play On This Beautiful Day!

Who can believe this beautiful weather for the middle of September??? We better enjoy it while we can!

LA: We had a busy morning today! We started our 5th grade Greek and Latin roots in Vocabulary Vine, as well as working through spelling sorts and talking about how the main ideas of a story help us to come up with accurate summaries. We even squeezed in some time for our read aloud.

HW: Weekly homework is due on Friday! We got a great head start this morning coming up with information for our summaries.

Math: More estimation today! We had a fun time experimenting and finding out how many times we were able to tap a pencil on the table in 10 seconds, which helped us to figure out how many times we might be able to do it in an hour, year and so on!

HW: Unit 2 test will be given on Thursday! Math box 2.9 & 2.10, journal page 56 and study link 2.10 are all due tomorrow. Also-multiplication packets were given back today...if you want to correct any of the problems that were marked wrong, for a higher score, they must be rewritten on clean paper, stapled to the original packet and turned in by Thursday.

Social Studies: We finished up our 3-D land form projects this afternoon! They look great in the Library windows!

HW: DARE starts tomorrow!

Things to watch for in blue folders tonight:

• A reminder about PTO's collection of box tops
• PTO Welcome Back Picnic RSVP form
  

Back To A Normal Week!

It's good to be back in our normal routine on such a beautiful day!

LA: Mondays are so busy as we introduce the skills for the week!
Spelling - We took our pretest this morning over words with the /ar/ sound in them. Students should know what list they are to study for Friday's test.
Grammar - We continue our study of sentences. Today we began looking a complex sentences using conjunctions. Today we introduced new conjunctions to go with those we learned about last week. They are: and, but, or, after, although, as, because, before, if, since, so that, until, when, whether and while.
Vocabulary - Our words are mission, disasters, environment, zone, gravity, maze, adjusted, and function. We continue to work with context clues to help us figure out meanings of unfamiliar words.
Comprehension - Our story this week is a non-fiction story about Space Camp. We will be working on the skill of finding main ideas and summarizing.
Our RIT words for the week include the following:

• Consonance - Is the repetition of a consonant sound in sentence. (dark deep dread crept in)

• Tone - Is the attitude the writer has toward the subject and audience he is writing for. For example the tone of this week's story is informative. The tone of the tall tale we read 2 weeks ago was humorous.

• Colloquialism - Is a common spoken expression. It is informal language. An example might be "What's up?" Often a colloquialism is regional. Do you call that fizzy beverage a coke (no matter the brand), a soda, or pop?

• Pun - Is a play on words for humorous effect. For example, a boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

• Climax - Is the turning point of a story and is often the part that is most intense. In the Davy Crockett story, the climax would be when the comet dives into the Atlantic Ocean to try and drown Davy.

HW: Don't forget weekly homework packet is due Friday. Also-if you have not turned in your 15, Maybe 16 Things To Worry About poem, it is due tomorrow.

Math: We took a time out today to review some multiplication skills. We are working on multiplying double and triple digit numbers. This is not coming easy to many of us. If you know you are struggling with basic multiplication facts, it's time to master them!

HW: Multiplication packets are due tomorrow if they weren't turned in today.

Social Studies: We had a great time working on our 3-D land form projects again with Mrs. Suddarth's class. Today we painted our landforms and prepared to assemble them, which we will be doing tomorrow.

HW: None

Don't forget:

• PTO Meeting on Wednesday at 10:00. There will be an Art Smart meeting immediately following.
• Northpoint is in the midst of their donation drive. Our PTO has chosen to do this instead of the normal fundraiser. Please consider making a donation to help support the many amazing PTO sponsored events.
• We are collecting Box Tops! Please send them in!

Things to watch for in blue folders tonight:

• PTO newsletter
  

It's Been A Wonderful Wednesday!

Happy Birthday Darius!

LA: Good thing we have long Wednesdays with no specials...we needed it this week after missing Monday! We started out by continuing to review our Greek and Latin roots during Vocabulary Vine adn Triumph time. As a class, we worked on sorting out spelling words with the /u/ sound spelled a variety of ways. This was tricky for some of us! We also learned about Venn diagrams today, using our information from the story about coniferous and deciduous forests. We met with our reading buddies and enjoyed listening to them read to us from their "Just Right Book Bag" along with having a visit from Mrs. Slater to teach us more about bullying and what to do to prevent it from happening. Last but not least, we even squeezed in some time for read aloud.

HW: Don't forget that weekly homework is due Friday. There are not RIT words this week and only four questions on the comprehension section. It's been asked if the summary could be shorter due to the length of the story, but as we discussed in class, there are plenty of facts to keep us writing for 7-10 sentences!

Math: Heads or Tails? We had fun completing an experiment with pennies today, which will help lead us into a further probability discussion tomorrow! We started to touch on the subject today and can't wait to get back to it in more detail tomorrow!

HW: Journal page 45, math box & study link 2.6 and the extra sheet are all due tomorrow.

Social Studies: Today was review day! We spent some time reviewing chapter 2, completing a fun vocabulary word chart and writing summaries that will help us prepare for tomorrow's test.

HW: Chapter 2 test will be given tomorrow.

Things to watch for in blue folders tonight:

• Welcome Back Picnic papers
• New Family Brunch (only if you're new to NP!)
  

It's Already Tuesday!

Wow! It was kinda nice being able to sleep in yesterday! I hope everyone had a great three day weekend!

Happy Birthday Baker!

LA: Even though today was our short day, we jam packed it full of our normal Monday stuff! Yikes! We were crazy busy this morning! Our story this week is Forests of the World, which introduces us to nonfiction articles for the year! It is a great informational piece of writing that we learned a lot from. We also took our spelling pre-test, please make sure your child is studying the appropriate list! This week in grammar, we will be learning how to combine simple sentences together to make compound sentences using conjunctions.

Story Vocabulary this week: quest, settings, reduce, buffet & major.

Rit Words for the week: Due to the short week, we have no RIT words!

HW: Weekly homework is due Friday. Please note-there are only 4 questions for the comprehension section this week! We had a long discussion this morning on the quality of our answers in the comprehension section as well. If answers are not written in complete thoughts, no credit will be given! Students know the expectations!

Math: Today was a fun, experimental kind of day! We are learning about landmarks in a set of data. Today we learned about maximum, minimum, range, mean, median, & mode. After we took some notes on these important things, we completed a reaction time experiment with partners. It was fun to calculate our reaction times and which hand has a faster reaction.

HW: Journal page 41, math box and study link 2.5

Social Studies-We took just a few minutes to review chapter 2 that we've been working on for about a week now. Unfortunately, President Obama's speech that had been pre-recorded for us froze half way through, so we weren't able to enjoy it all.

HW: Test over chapter 2 will be given on Thursday.

Things to watch for in blue folders tonight:

• An informational sheet (yellow paper) about this year's fundraising campaign! This is a lot different than year's past, so please read carefully!
  

Thursday, Thursday!

We had a fantastic day today!

LA: Today was another one of our short days due to double specials. We worked through grammar-learning about commas in a series-and also a skills page, talking about plot and setting. We squeezed in time for examples of our RIT words, too!

HW: Don't forget weekly homework is due tomorrow--parent signature is required! We will have normal assessments tomorrow as well! Don't forget those book orders!

Math: We talked about number stories using addition and subtraction today. Partners worked well together plowing through a couple of journal pages! We seem to have a good grasp on this concept!

HW: Math box and study link 2.4

Social Studies-Lights, Camera, Action! We become actors for a short bit today and put ourselves inside the text of the social studies books! It was great fun to act out a scene in the book and treat it as though we were there.

HW: Finish summary on page 12 in the Interactive Student Notebook if not completed yet. Chapter 2 test has been moved to Thursday of next week!

Things to watch for in blue folders tonight:

• Letter from Mrs. Stephan regarding a speech from President Obama.
  

What A Wednesday!

Whew! We have so much going on these days, it's hard to keep up!

LA: Today is our long morning, so it's always nice to play "catch up" for those things that we have had to put on hold from earlier in the week! We worked through grammar today, learning more about subjects and predicates, and adding in information about compound subjects and predicates this time. We also spent some more time with our spelling words and working with synonyms for those words.

We enjoyed time with our reading buddies from Mrs. McGann's class as well as a visit from Mrs. Slater, who will be joining us for the next 6 Wednesdays to talk about bullying and self confidence. In addition to all of those fun things, we even found time to partner share our story for this week!

HW: Weekly homework is due Friday. Normal assessments will be given on Friday as well. Don't forget that book orders are due in 2 days!

Math: Students got their unit 1 tests back today! We had a time for questions and answers about things that were incorrect on those tests! We then jumped right into unit 2, reviewing how to add and subtract decimals! We were shocked to see how many of us forgot to line up those decimals!

HW: Journal pages 32 & 34, math boxes 2.2 & 2.3, study links 2.2 & 2.3, and an extra sheet were assigned. Students were given lots of class time to work on these tasks! Unit 1 tests that received an N need to be signed and returned tomorrow.

Social Studies: Whew! We worked really hard today and made it through three lessons! It was great learning about the first Americans and how they made their migration routes over from Siberia! We also learned about some of the Hopi Indian origin stories.

HW: Students need to complete their 5-7 sentence summary about section 2.4 on page 11 in their Student Interactive Notebook if it wasn't completed in class. We are anticipating our next test, over unit 2, on Wednesday.

Things to watch for in blue folders tonight:

• Market Day order forms
  

Say Cheese!

Everyone looked nice and spiffy for pictures today! I can't wait for them to come back so we can enjoy those smiles!

LA: We had a super short morning, not only due to double specials, but also pictures as well! We were able to work on our RIT vocabulary words and definitions, along with a spelling page.

HW: Weekly homework is due on Friday. Book orders are also due Friday.

Math: Today was the unit 1 test! There weren't many questions prior to the start of the test, so we're crossing our fingers for great scores!

HW: None

Social Studies: We jumped into chapter 2 today. We discussed how it feels to move to a new place, join a new club or change our environment. We even left our classroom for a minute so we could come in fresh with a new perspective. We had an interesting time learning about how people would change our space to make it more comfortable. This all kicked us off on the topic of the early Americans coming over from Asia. Chapter 1 tests were passed back today.

HW: If your child received a N on their Chapter 1 test, it needs to be signed and returned tomorrow.