Fifth Grade News

Tuesday, September 10 - Back to School Night 6 - 8pm

Thursday, October 3 - Systemwide Professional Development Day - Schools Closed for Students

Friday, October 18 - Schools Closed for Teachers and Students (MSEA Convention)

Friday, October 25 - Field Trip to Oregon Ridge (more information coming soon)

Thursday, October 31 - First Marking Period Ends - Schools Close 3 Hours Early

Friday, November 1 - Systemwide Professional Development Day - Schools Closed for Students

Tuesday, November 5 - Election Day - Schools Closed for Teachers and Students

Thursday, November 14 - Report Cards available on Focus

Tuesday, November 19 - Parent Teacher Conference Day - Schools Closed for Students

Wednesday, November 27 - Schools Close 3 Hours Early

Thursday, November 28 - Friday, November 29 - No School

Friday, December 20 - Schools Close 3 Hours Early

Monday, December 23 - Wednesday, January 1 - Winter Break - Schools Closed for Teachers and Students

Thursday, January 2 - Schools Reopen

Monday, January 20 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day - Schools and Offices Closed

Friday, January 24 - Second Marking Period Ends - Schools Close 3 Hours Early

Wednesday, January 29 - Systemwide Professional Development Day - Schools Closed for Students

When notifying the school about a change in dismissal or early dismissal, please send an email to both fifth grade teachers as well as both of our office staff Barb Balestrini bbalestrini@bcps.org and Katherine Taylor ktaylor3@bcps.org on the morning of the change or early dismissal.

In this first unit, students use the study of volume to review and extend skills and concepts related to multiplication.

Big Ideas:

• Multiplication and division are inverse operations.
• Using different models and strategies for multiplication and division can lead to efficient computation.
• Understanding properties of operations promotes efficient computation.
• Relational thinking can be used to interpret and relate expressions using symbols and tables.
• Estimation serves as a tool for judging reasonableness of computations.
• Algebraic expressions and equations can be used to symbolically represent real life situations.
• Volume of rectangular prisms can be found by using a formula.

Students will take their End of Unit Assessment (EUA) for Unit 1 on Tuesday, September 17th.

In this unit, students learn to find areas of polygons by decomposing, rearranging, and composing shapes. They learn to understand and use the terms “base” and “height,” and find areas of parallelograms and triangles. Students approximate areas of non-polygonal regions by polygonal regions. They represent polyhedra with nets and find their surface areas.

Big Ideas:

• Multiple strategies (decomposing, composing, rearranging, and enclosing, using nets, etc.) can be used to find the area and surface area of a polygon.

• There is a relationship between the area of triangles and the area of parallelograms.

• Formulas can be derived and justified when finding area and surface area.

Hello, parents! For anyone that did not see last week's write-up about this year's ELA program, I've kept it below.

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We began a brand new ELA curriculum last year called "HMH - Into Reading" and it is incredibly comprehensive. Unlike prior years where there were 6 Units, HMH's 5th Grade Curriculum contains 10 Modules, each with a specific theme. The first of which being "Inventors At Work." Each module is comprised of 3 weeks with 3 accompanying texts. All texts will be included in your child's "MyBook" which is a consumable book they'll receive shortly. They will each get their own and are intended to write in in, answering short answer questions and showing their thinking. These books will stay at school unless a special situation arises.

Each week of a module has a different focus, all culminating into either a writing project or an assessment. For Module 1, the end goal is a writing project; specifically, researching an inventor and their invention and writing an expository essay . During week 1, we will brainstorm and research, week 2 we will write and create, and week 3 we will practice and present.

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As a side-note, your 5th graders will be coming home each Thursday with a copy of this week's phonics/spelling words. We complete a weekly Friday spelling quiz and it would really benefit the kiddos to go home, briefly look those words over and practice spelling them with an adult.

Lastly, on Monday, students will be receiving ELA homework for the first time this year. I have sent home a homework packet for each student to complete and return on Friday. I've also sent home another packet that will help both students and parents understand how to complete each day's homework task. Essentially, your child will be building a paragraph each week. Every day, they are working on part of that paragraph and on Thursday, they put it all together.

This unit will focus on mental, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical health. Throughout the unit students will be gaining knowledge and skills that will help them make healthy choices and decisions. In this unit, students will learn and practice the skills of decision-making, self-management, interpersonal communication, accessing information, advocacy and analyzing influences through the lens of personal wellness and nutrition.