Plans Week of May 26, 2015

George Washington leading troops across the Delaware River to surprise attack Hessian forces at Trenton.

Highlights from Last Week:

PARCC and MCAS are finally done for the year! Students worked through 10 sessions of testing this year with focus, rigor, and endurance. We had a giant 5th grade sing-a-long on Thursday to celebrate.

On Wednesday, Ms. Mullarkey gave us the opportunity to play the last flowers in the community garden in front of the school. Students got to smell and taste some interesting plants such as catnip and chives.

Students are learning how to write an effective argument essay. Although they don't care much for the designated topic of "chocolate milk in schools," they are working hard to accurately use quotations, transitional phrases, and powerful evidence to support their arguments.

Here is the general plan for the week:

Special:

• Monday, May 25th: Memorial Day, no school.

Reading: 

• This week we finished our guided reading book groups. Students have been reading a book that has survival and resilience as a theme.
• This week we will learn strategies for summarizing and synthesizing what we read.

Writing:

• We continue our unit on Opinion Essays. Students will learn how to be persuasive and more analytical, able to weigh evidence, to follow lines of logic, and draw evidence-based conclusions. 
• We will finish our argument essays about whether or not schools should serve chocolate milk to students.

Math: 

•  We begin a fun yet challenging unit on Algebra centered around a frog jumping competition (we won't actually be using frogs).
• Students will learn how to use variables and algebraic expressions to represent objects.
• We will operate on algebraic equivalencies to create new equivalencies and solve for unknown quantities. 

Social Studies:

• We continue our study of the American Revolution by watching PBS's "Liberty". We will learn about important battles and actions of the revolutionary war, such as Bunker Hill, Trenton & Princeton, Saratoga, Valley Forge, and Yorktown. We will also learn about important revolutionary figures, such as John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and more. 

Thanks for reading! As always, please contact me with any questions, comments, or feedback.