Week of September 16-20

Hi Families,
It was a very busy week! I hope your child is adjusting well to the routines and growing demands of school. I’m still working on it myself! We are slowly getting into a rhythm. I have a lot of information to share below.

Room Parent
Our classroom still does not have a “room parent.” Classroom Parent's act as a parent contact for the grade, help organize grade level participation at PTO events (raffle baskets, grade level tables at events, organize classroom support when requested by teachers). It is a fun way to get involved with your child's class and the school. Please follow the link if interested in volunteering to be a Classroom Parent for Ms. Kimball’s Class: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeFQrqzZkqUxd52eykY1nlKVzTD4Gp0mLSCMzhipvYXjwaRwg/viewform  

Fifth Grade T-shirts
An order form for fifth grade t-shirts went out today! Please read the form. The PTO prefers people order their t-shirts using the QR code or this link. If you are unable to pay through the link you may submit your payment with the paper order form we sent home with your student and return this with your student’s teacher. Orders are due next Friday, September 27. If this t-shirt order is a financial hardship for your family please contact Alissa Gallegos for assistance. [email protected] 
Thank you to Ally Bosley and Jackie Collins for organizing this! 

Reading Survey
Please complete this survey about reading for Mrs. Gallegos. She is collecting anonymous reading data to help inform our school’s approach to supporting reading at home. https://forms.gle/FTxYkRTe5Wp3tPCP7 

Safety Stars!
If your student applied to be a safety star they have been assigned a position! Their jobs will begin on Monday, September 23. Students will enter the building for their morning position through the cafeteria door by the dumpster (glamorous!). If students have an afternoon job they will be dismissed through the door by the front office. This is a good meeting place for kids who may be driving/walking home together. Thank you to Mrs. Gilchrist for organizing all of the student assignments!

Buddies
We met with our 2nd grade buddies in Ms. Hill’s class on Friday. 5th graders did a great job being role models. Buddies interviewed each other, drew pictures of each other, and some had time to read a story together.

Math
Unit 1 “Finding Volume.” This week we tackled more complex volume problems. Students learned to decompose a figure into two rectangular prisms, find the volume of each, then add the two volumes together to find the volume of the whole figure.

• At home: Continue building your child’s fact fluency in addition/subtraction and basic multiplication with tens. Ask your child to mentally solve equations like 16 + ? =23, and 7 x 80 =?  As problems get more complex and multi-stepped, students need to have accurate calculations of the basics in order to avoid unnecessary confusion. Thank you!

English Language Arts
Historical Fiction novel study of, “The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963,” by Christopher Paul Curtis. We are over halfway through the novel, and the Watson family has begun their journey to Birmingham, Alabama. The story has been relatively light hearted and funny so far, but things start to get serious as the Watsons, an African American family, journey to what was considered the most segregated city in the South in the 1960s. Please reach out if your child expresses any discomfort with the content or historical context.

• Ask your child why the Watsons are going to Birmingham given its reputation (to teach their delinquent son Byron some harsh realities about the world he must face and to get him to “Straighten up and fly right.”

Also in ELA, we have been writing short answers to comprehension questions about the story in our ELA notebooks. We also did a “Because, But, So” writing task where students needed to finish sentence stems with each of those three conjunctions based on The Watsons Go To Birmingham.

Science
Unit 1: Matter in Motion. We took a little detour in science to engage in some hands-on exploration in order to build student engagement and background knowledge. Student groups rotated through 7 stations to explore a variety of properties of matter, such as solubility, hardness, flexibility, density, thermal conductivity, and texture. 

Community Building
We continue our team building during Morning Meeting each day, learning to listen to our peers, take turns, and learn about each other. 

• Ask your child to describe how to play the Morning Meeting activity “Alibi.”

Important Dates: 

• Safety Stars begin on 9/23
• 5th grade t-shirt order form due on Friday 9/27

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