Thursday, September 14, 2017

Reminders:

• Chorus letters went home this week.  If your child is interested in joining Winter Chorus, please make sure you fill out and return the blue form.
• I sent home math letters with directions for you to access your student's math accounts that we use here in class.  If you did not get that information, check your child's backpack.
• Max Bent, a beat boxer and resident artist, will be giving a performance tonight at SRES from 6:00-7:00.  I hope you can make it!  We will be working with Mr. Bent over the next couple of weeks.  Check out our Twitter feed for some live streaming of today's performance too!!
• I will be out tomorrow, Friday the 15th.  My son is having oral surgery that day.  I will not get to emails till late in the day if you try to contact me.  Sorry about that.
• Next Thursday, September 21st, FCPS has closed schools in honor of Rosh Hashanah.  It is also Fair Day.  

What's Up?

Math:  

Focus Standards

5.NBT.5 - Fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm.

5.NBT.2 - Explain patterns in the number of zeros of the product when multiplying a number by powers of 10, and explain patterns in the placement of the decimal point when a decimal is multiplied or divided by a power of 10. Use whole number exponents to denote powers of 10.

We will continue to clean up our strategies for multi-digit multiplication as we progress to using the traditional algorithm.  We will also look more closely at powers of 10 and how multiplication and division by a power of 10 changes a number.

We will also be working with Beat Boxer, Max Bent, to graph data using coordinate pairs and explore exponential growth and powers of ten.

Writing:

We are continuing to work on creating drafts of significant memories, people, and places in our lives as we study well crafted stories and author's work.

Reading: 

 Focus Standard

RI.5.2 - Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.

We have learned two reading strategies to help us comprehend informational text this week, Sketch in Chunks, and Shrink a Text.  We will continue to practice these strategies in our reading.

Sketch in Chunks Steps

• Stop after every paragraph or short section.
• Think, “What am I picturing?”
• Draw a quick sketch.

At the end of the article, look back over your sketches and ask yourself, “So, what’s this whole article mostly about?”

Shrink a Text Steps

• Read a chunk of text with your partner.
• Decide together what the main idea of the text is.
• Try to shrink everything you just read into one sentence.
• Think critically, and be sure you can back up your idea with details from the text.
• Read and repeat!

Science: 

We will discuss our unit driving question:  How do human and natural interactions affect the Earth past, present and future?
We will begin to take a look at Earth's Systems and build our understanding of this concept. Look forward to seeing and hearing about our class terrariums!

This best of science this week:  Amazing Shadow Art