5/6 Classroom Newsletter

Photo - Creating our own Greek Gods and Goddesses cards!

iReady:

At Emma Miller School, we use a program called iReady to track student progress, measure growth, and complete lessons in areas of weakness. We use this for both math and reading. Each week, students are given class time to complete their personalized lessons. I have been taking time to remind students how important these lessons are, even though they are on the computer. In order to help them take ownership of their iReady learning, we have been tracking the completion of our lessons each week. You may notice these packets coming home with their mail. Giving their complete focus and best effort will help make these lessons meaningful and help with academic growth! I hope that you and your student can discuss their progress with their lessons and the importance of always giving it their best effort. This learning tool is as important, if not more so, than MCAS for us teachers to track student progress.

Attendance:

5/6 has been doing AMAZING with attendance this year. Our class has had whole-class perfect attendance (65% of the days or more) each month so far this year. With attendance being so consistent, we have been flying through our curriculum and will be able to cover more material as the year goes on.

Wit and Wisdom:

Essential Question - What can we learn from myths and stories?

We have been spending some time focused on nonfiction texts, including Understanding Greek Myths which explains the history behind Greek myths.

Reading Rotations:

Students have been working hard with their interactive vocabulary curriculum, iReady reading lessons, and morphology lessons. Due to schedule changes, Mrs. Zepka will no longer be running our vocabulary rotation, so I will be taking over.

Read Aloud:

We are about 1/3 of the way through The Lightning Thief, the first novel of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. We have been having a great time connecting all the Gods, monsters, and heroes from our mythology study to the characters in the novel.

Since returning from winter break, the 5/6 class has been focused on solving problems using the Order of Operations. These problems can be super tricky as they require multiple steps and being able to catch your mistakes. I am so proud of the hard work and determination from the whole group as they work through these!

Next, we will be moving on to fractions. Both groups will work at the own levels to complete grade-appropriate material around prime/composite numbers, greatest common factor, least common multiple, and factor trees. This will lead us to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions!

Social Studies:

As humans discovered agriculture, people were able to settle in one place and form communities. We will study some of the earliest examples of city-states located in Sumer. Our essential question for this chapter is: How did the geographic challenges lead to the rise of city-states in Mesopotamia?

Science:

When we complete the current social studies unit, we will be studying where energy comes from, how plants produce their own food, how energy moves through an ecosystem from plants to animals.

Email: jbadorini@savoyelementary.com
Location: 26 Chapel Rd Savoy, MA 01256
Phone: (413)742-1992