November 30 to December 4
This week you should receive a print-out of your child's District Test results. Students are not taking the time to use the testing strategies. These tests are 20% of your child's grade. I know we can do better than we did this time. The skills on this test were a review from August. At least 5 of the questions students had seen on prior weekly tests. We will continue to focus on figurative language and story elements.
We will have short reading selections integrating fall, Native Americans, Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving.
The stories we have read from the reading textbook have been AR stories. Students are to test on these stories. They must read the story before they can test. This will help with their AR goals. These following stories: And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, Katie's Trunk, and James Forten.
The focused reading skills for this 9 weeks: story elements, main ideas, antoynms, and synoyms. Students are still struggling with main idea and drawing conclusions. Have the your child read a magazine article, a newspaper article, a flyer, or their library books to practice these skills.
We are also working on the following suffixes: -ous, -tion, -or, -ion, -ity, -ment
Students need to complete their spelling-vocabulary charts. This activity covers many skills that students are tested on. (Suffixes, antonyms, synonyms, multi-meaning words, and words in context) This activity is to have students practice in applying the skill.
We have decided to extend the due date of the Reading Fair Project until after the Thanksgiving Holiday. You should have received a note about this.
We are expecting the students' summaries to reflect 5th grade work. We have practiced writing a paragraph on a character and a paragraph on the setting. The plot/summary must include an introduction, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, a resolution, and a conclusion. Including a paragraph on the setting and character, students should have a 5-7 paragraph summary.
This 9 weeks we will have the Reading Fair. All 5th grade students are required to complete a project. This project will count 5 grades: reading, English, writing, presentation, project board.
