5th Grade Weekly Update for Week of April 22nd
Photo Highlight of the Week: Students were enthusiastic about learning how the eye works as they conducted their own bovine eye dissection!
ELA: On Monday, we will meet for our second to last group discussion about Tiger Rising. Students should have completed the vocabulary sheet on the back of their discussion questions and a writing assignment that correlates with the chapter selection. During testing week, students chose the poems they will recite at our end of the year coffeehouse. On Tuesday, we will review examples of poetry recitation from poetryoutloud.org, which sponsors the national recitation contest every April. We have modeled our poetry recitation after the competition by breaking the skills up into physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, evidence of understanding, and their overall performance. We’ll watch examples of students from the actual contest and practice reading our poems while incorporating these skills. We will also review seven types of poetry: haiku, cinquain, sonnet, narrative, limerick, lyric, and concrete. We will also start our final grammar unit of the year, homophones and homographs. We’ll review too, to, and two and their, there, and they’re this week.
History: We’ll start our last, and my favorite, unit of the year: The Renaissance! We’ll start off by reviewing terminology we’ll be covering throughout the unit and watch an introduction to the Italian Renaissance. Our first lesson covers some of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers that inspired the Italian Renaissance and an introduction to some of the biggest contributors, including Leonardo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Johannes Gutenberg and Cervantes. We’ll learn about why the Renaissance started in Italy and the Patrons that supported the artists.
Math: On Monday, students will share the treasure maps they designed. Students will work in small groups and answer the questions each student created with his or her treasure map. Later in the week, we will begin a fun and meaningful in-class project that will help students explore geometrical shapes that surround us. Students will design and create their own shape books to bring home! This project will allow students to show what they are learning as we explore these various concepts, and it will also be a wonderful keepsake that will be fun to look back on years from now!
Science: Wow! Our young scientists did such a wonderful job with our bovine eye dissection! Before and during the dissection, we discussed the different parts of the eye and their functions. After the dissection, we compared what we learned about the bovine eye to the human eye. This week, we will begin our Investigating Heat Cell. Students will learn the difference between insulators and conductors and learn the difference between endothermic and exothermic reactions!
Other: We have many events planned for this week outside of our already full academic schedule! Check out the list below for a full run-down.
Monday: Sign and return science test that was sent home in Friday Folders.
Wednesday: Book Buddy Hot Dog Cookout-During our lunch time, we’ll meet with our Book Buddies to share a fun lunch! If your child still wants to order lunch or bring a lunch that’s fine! Please cancel lunch if your student is going to eat the hot dog lunch provided.
Thursday: We will shadow the 6th grade students to see what a typical day looks like for a sixth grader at WA! We’ll go to their regularly scheduled classes, go to lunch and recess, and spend more time getting to know Mrs. Seeba and Mrs. Kuegeman as sixth grade teachers! We are still planning on attending Band at 1:00 since we have a concert fast approaching. Be sure to still send in your student’s instrument that day.
Friday: The long awaited FIELD DAY!!!! More info about this fun event at Fullers Park will be sent home later in the week. We are watching the weather carefully. If the fields are too wet due to rain, or it is raining, our rain date would be the following Friday. T-shirts and team assignments typically go home the day before the event.
Saturday: Our Annual Canned Food Drive supporting MUST Ministries. Please stop by to help collect cans from our WA families to fill MUST’s pantry. We’ll need student volunteers to help count cans collected into the collection barrels. We’ll be at school in the main parking lot taking donations from 9-12. Stop by for part or all of the time to help!