Dear Families,
Have you asked your child recently about the Boston Tea Party or the Quartering Acts? Your 5th graders are deeply immersed in reading articles, informational texts, and historical fiction all about pre Revolutionary Times and the events that led to the American Revolution. They are paying incredible attention to the details in their reading and taking the time to analyze the facts, the perspectives of the English and the Colonists and to make connections between events and people! As 5th Graders they have been taking endless notes and reflecting upon them and having conversations with one another. These notes, reflections and opinions will make their way into their research reports. As we move through our Historical Fiction books we are also thinking about the story elements. 5th Graders wrote to me about the setting in their books, citing sentences and words from the text that justified the time period or the mood of the setting. 5th Graders have also been keeping a timeline of important events in their stories, keeping track of what has happened and thinking about what might happen next. Keeping a timeline also engages us in thinking about which events really matter to the plot of the story. So much reading, writing and analyzing going on!
Can your child divide 432 by 18? What strategy would they use? An area model? Partial Quotients? Standard Algorithm? Do they use a multiplication menu to get them started? Can they see connections between these strategies for division? Light bulbs have been going off around the classroom as students focus on finding the most efficient division strategies for themselves. Students are working hard to also be accurate and precise with their math so that they are coming to the correct answer! Our goals for math have been:
*Use mental strategies to multiply by 10
*Begin to use mental strategies to multiply 2-digit by 2 digit numbers
*Dividing 3 digit numbers by 1 or 2 digit numbers with our without remainders
*Investigating divisibility rules for 2, 5 and 10
*Understanding the relationship between multiplication and division
As Writer's we have been busy flash drafting about everything we know about colonization, Plymouth colony and next week the reasons/events that led to the Revolutionary War! Our muscles have been flexing (in our hands and our brains) as we organize our facts into detailed paragraphs that not only teach our readers about our topics but also include analysis (our opinions, reflections and wonderings about our topics). We also have been working on an on-demand task, reading information about a topic (a magazine article, a chart comparing two things, captions and photos) to gather information to be used to respond to a prompt. As we write these pieces we are continuing to use the LEAF format to organize our writing! We are taking the LEAF Paragraph format and applying it to a multi-paragraph essay! We have been helping one another brainstorm interesting and catchy leads that will hook our writers, discussing the variety of ways in which our paragraphs can be organized following the EA pattern (Evidence/Analysis) and sharing our finishers or conclusions! Next week we will be writing an "on demand" piece and hopefully all of our writing will help us create a cohesive writing sample in one 70 minute block!
Looking for some extra typing practice, check out this link...http://www.typingtest.com/. Students used this site with Ellen during their Tech class on Thursday! Many of them also explored the Smithsonian Quests, they have their login information and can continue with this on their own.
Enjoy the weekend!
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