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| {preston} |
Phone: 484-1331
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Dear Parents and Students,
There are seven weeks left in our fifth grade year, time has gone by fast and these last seven weeks will go by even faster. In math we are working very hard to cover as much of the curriculum as possible before taking the STAR Tests during the last week of April. The pace is fast and students often struggle with some of the more difficult concepts. These are the main elements remaining for this year; Algebra: expressions, equations, and integers then percent which ties into fractions and decimals and finally the fifth grade concepts of geometry. Students are using all of the concepts taught since the beginning of the year and of course previous year's work. Math is like a brick wall, the higher concepts of the wall depend on the strength and stability of the lower concepts taught. I will be teaching math right up to the first days of June.
We have finished our language arts work in our class readers. We will be starting next week on reading some of our fifth grade novels and exploring the ideas that these stories present. Some of these titles are; "A Wrinkle in Time" and "The Phantom Tollbooth". We have one or two regular weeks of spelling left starting next week then we will be reviewing our fifth grade high frequency words for the year-end spelling test. We will also continue to work on our writing skills with in-class assignments, the state reports and the last writing prompt.
In Social Studies we are studying life in the 13 colonies and the events and reasons for leading up to the Revolutionary War. We will be reading about the battles and personalities of the war and the making of the United States Constitution. The students are making good progress on their State Reports, we continue to try and complete most work in the class. Next week I have another check-in to make sure no students are falling behind. I am going to set Friday May 18th as the due date for the reports, I have a feeling that many students will be finished before this date. You should have received a notice saying that the state boards are due on Wednesday May 23rd. The notice outlines the major requirements of this project and the students have seen several examples from previous year's work so they have a good idea of what is needed for this assignment. This should be a fun project that promotes the interesting things about their particular states.
Science rotations are finished except for the review sessions that are preparation for the STAR Test. It is at this time of the year (May 14 to 18) that fifth grade students will be learning about nutrition and human physiology.
If you have any questions about these last weeks please direct them to me by phone, email, or notes and I will answer them to the best of my ability.
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