5th Grade MP3 Campus

School Data is open on the 1st for parent reviews. These are due by the 5th. We hope the cut and paste grade level newsletter will be helpful to supplement your remote learning plan reviews. Thank you for submitting in a timely manner and if you need help, please reach out to your SLPC.

Topics: i-ready diagnostic and numerical expressions

Activities: Outside of taking the i-ready diagnostic for math, we started our first unit on numerical expressions. The key objective in this unit is for students to be able to communicate appropriately what expressions or equations they are working on. We start with listening and writing skills. Students listen to expressions from me and write out what they hear using numbers and symbols on a whiteboard. This helps students practice listening to someone and being able to visualize properly what is being said so they can be active participants in a mathematical conversation. Our next goal will be to work on reading out loud a mathematical expression for another student to write out. Here, students practice both being able to appropriately read out an expression and listen to and reproduce an expression. The goal being to get the listener to be able to write out the appropriate expression spoken by the reader. We will continue this unit into next month with a variety of games and challenges.

Teacher Tip: Have a mathematical conversation with your student and ask them to write out what you are talking about to ensure you that they are understanding the conversation. Use a variety of operational synonyms to diversify and challenge your student (ie. for addition: sum, altogether, and, also, etc.; for subtraction: minus, difference between, how much more, less than, etc.)

Teacher Info: Mrs. Alexander, halexander@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: About Me writing, acrostic poetry, journaling, Book Project introduction, Fall Haiku, iReady testing

Activities: Language Arts is off to a great start! We spent our first day talking about classroom routines - emphasizing our overarching goals for the year to BE BRAVE and BE KIND. We did a fun movement activity to demonstrate both goals with 100% participation! Our first writing project was called About Me. This was a fun way to share about ourselves and learn more about our classmates. Next we created acrostic poems with our names as the focus word and made class banners to adorn the room. Two days were spent on the iReady diagnostic test. Students worked hard and now their future iReady lessons will target the skills they need to learn. Journaling and group discussions play an important role in our writing practice and group engagement - and both are successfully underway. Book projects were introduced and students are excited about creatively sharing what they are reading at home. We then worked on Haiku poetry about fall and focused on using descriptive words that create vivid imagery for the reader.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Teacher info: Mrs. Oscarson, roscarson@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Westward Expansion, Manifest Destiny and the Nation's Growing Pains

Activities: Our first month of learning is in the books! Our 5th graders have been doing an excellent job learning about some challenging topics in US History. We began by examining some ideas that were familiar, like westward expansion and a term that was new for most students, Manifest Destiny. To build our understanding of this important idea, we have relied on some .ppt presentations and some super fun discussions. As we learned about America expanding into new territories, we discussed how that growth led to new challenges. Students reflected on how America's growth impacted different groups, including

-Many Native Tribes

-Our neighbors to the south, Mexico, with whom we fought to acquire new land

-Enslaved people

The impact on this final group is where we have spent most of our time. We learned about three compromises our government struck as they decided what to do about a very tricky question; Would slavery be allowed in the new states and territories that were becoming parts of the USA. These compromises included:

1. The Missouri Compromise

2. The Compromise of 1850

3. The Kansas-Nebraska Act

Most recently, we began to think about the country in the years building up to the Civil War from a few different points of view. Working at their tables, students were assigned one group to learn about and take notes on. For each group, students were asked to focus on daily life, the power that group had in society and the important political issues they faced.

Students have done a super job reading and listening but I have been especially impressed by everyone's willingness to tackle the tough work of notetaking. Nice job!

Teacher Tip: Topics and work we do are shared in Google Classroom. Feel free to ask your student for a peek at what we have done so far.

Teacher Info: Let me know if you have any questions!

Mr. Caraco, jcaraco@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Review classroom routines, keyboarding, Google Docs, Google Sheets pre-assessment & review

Activities: We began our school year by re-establishing classroom routines, including daily keyboarding and expectations. Next, students worked to create a word cloud of 30 adjectives to describe themselves. This assignment began with a list in Google Docs, practicing the cut & paste functions, using a word cloud program, and finally downloading the image (cloud) to their Chromebooks. This was a multi-step, tricky assignment, but everyone persevered! We are ending this month with a Google Sheets pre-assessment and review before we begin a unit on new skills in Sheets.

Teacher Tip: All assignments and keyboarding links are available in Google Classroom. Students are welcome to continue to work on class projects or practice keyboarding skills when they are not at MP3. Students who did not complete his/ her word cloud have been asked to finish at home.

Teacher Info: Mrs. Montgomery, rmontgomery@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Elements of Art: Line & Shape; Principles of Design: Pattern; Techniques: Collage

Activities: Welcome to a new year of art! We began our semester talking about what we want our class to look, sound, and feel like. Each class created a class agreement and each student created a bird with their name as a signature for what our “flock” agreed to. Next, we learned how to draw Zentangles - various patterns with specific lines and shapes. Students filled a square with the patterns they liked and gave it a pop of color with a tissue paper shape. These have been combined with the other 3 classes to create a mural for our classroom. Our first individual project was inspired by the book, In a Jar by Deborah Marcero. In the book, the characters collect things that bring them joy - from a colorful sunset to the sounds of the city. Students drew their own jars and filled them with magazine images of the things that bring them joy. It has been fun learning about each other by looking at everyone’s jars!

Reflection Questions: Ask your student what they included in their jar!

Teacher Info: Mrs. Warnock, swarnock@meridian.wednet.edu