5th Grade Newsletter

 5th Grade Newsletter

Monday, October 4, 2021

IMPORTANT DATES:

Wed.,-Oct.,13th - Book report due

Wed.,-Oct.,13th - All missing work due

Thurs., Oct. 14th- Volcano Day

Fri.-Oct. 15th- End of First Quarter

Wed.-Oct. 20th - Worker´s Holiday

Fri.-Oct. 22nd-Mon. 25th - NO school. Harvest Holiday

Tues.-Oct.26th -Fri., Oct., 28th - RED RIBBON WEEK

Fri.-Oct. 29th - Halloween dress up & class parties; no masks or face paint

Wed-Nov.3rd- Picture Retakes

     

Thank you so much for meeting with us last week.  You have wonderful children, and we think you are pretty great parents as well. We have almost reached the end of 1st term.  Wow!!    All missing work is due Wednesday, October 13th in order to earn Worker’s Holiday on Wednesday, October 20th. Please go to PowerSchool and check your child’s grades.  Worker’s Holiday will be on Wednesday, Oct. 20th.  We will have a Read-A-Thon in the afternoon.  Students may wear PJ’s, if they would like and bring a blanket or pillow, a few healthy snacks (NO drinks), and of course a book or books to READ.  Students not earning the activity will work in another room to complete missing assignments..

     You are invited to come have a BLAST with us as we explode our volcanoes on Thurs., at 2:30 (Oct. 14) on the south playground.  Please do NOT park in the bus loading zone. You may  park on 500 S. behind the playground, or in the parking lot.  Exploded volcanoes may not come back to the school, so students need to take them home or take them around to the dumpster at the north end of the school. There was a letter sent home explaining how students can create their volcano.

We are excited that the DARE program is going well here at South. Our students are enjoying Officer Uresk. *Just for your information, Students will be writing a DARE essay in November, which will be required in order to graduate from  DARE. We will let you know in the next newsletter when the DARE graduation will be. 

         The fifth grade Maturation Program will not be held in person this year, due to Covid, but if you have requested a packet and the link to the video to help you with teaching this at home, you will receive these items towards the end of October.

Remember that we do not have school Fri., Oct., 22nd and Mon., Oct. 25. Please feel welcome to email, call, or come in with your concerns.  

                                     Thank you,

          Mrs. Little, Mrs. Orton & Mrs. Sherratt

 Mrs. Sherratt’s Class Update

Hello Parents,

We had a great start to our new school year! Your kids are amazing and I enjoyed my first few days getting to know them. We’re still working our way through rules and procedures, and “housekeeping” items, but we’re well on our way to a wonderful year together.

You should have seen (and signed daily) a yellow planner/reading log packet last week. The students will receive a new planner/reading log today. The packet is blue this week and will come home each night. Your child needs to read for 20 Minutes, then take another 5-10 minutes to write 3-5 sentences about what he/she reads. Please read over your child’s response each day and make sure they’re completing the assignment neatly and to the best of their ability, then initial on the day. Five days of reading are required each week and the 6th day will be for bonus points. 

Your child should be able to explain to you how the planner works as well. We haven’t gotten into much curriculum yet, but we will this week. Your student should be writing down each assignment as we begin it. If the assignment is not due that day, I will write down the due date on the board and your child will also write down the due date on his/her planner. If the assignment is due that day and your child has completed it, they will put a check-mark next to the assignment. If they did not complete the assignment and it was due that day, it becomes homework and they will bring it home to be completed and returned the following day.

We discussed Reading Revolution requirements last week and your child should have brought home two blue papers that show the details. Those papers should be kept safe for future reference if needed. I did notice that several were left in cubbys over the weekend, so you may want to remind your child to bring the papers home if you haven’t seen them. 

As I said, we will work our way into more and more curriculum as the week progresses. The following is information on upcoming curriculum and events…

Curriculum

CKLA: Unit #1 Personal Narratives--Students will learn about personal narratives as part of the reading throughout this unit. They will also work on their own personal narratives, so you can help them brainstorm an exciting story they might want to share through writing. 

Spelling: We will begin spelling next week. We will practice in class, however, your child should be practicing at home as well.

Grammar/L. A.: We’ve got some fun activities planned for this week to help the students better understand and use adjectives. Ask your child about their big green monster!!

Math: Chapter 1: This unit covers the following concepts

• Investigating place value and patterns

• Place Value with Whole Numbers

• Algebra-Properties

• Algebra-Powers of 10 and exponents

• Algebra-Multiplication patterns

• Multiplying by 1-digit numbers

• Multiplying by multi-digit numbers

• Relating multiplication to division

• Algebra-Numerical expressions

• Algebra-Evaluate numerical expressions

• Algebra-Grouping symbols

Upcoming

August 30 Look for Patriot Pass-off book

September 6 Labor Day--no school

September 8 DaRE begins with Officer Uresk

September 15         Book Report Due

September 17         Mid-term--check grades

September 23         Field Trip to Mammoth Caves

Sept.27-Oct. 1 SEP Week--School is out at 2:30 Daily

5th Grade Back to School Night 2021

March 5, 2021

 Hello Parents,

      I haven't updated our blog for several weeks, but I can assure the classroom has been buzzing! Mrs. Evarts has been solo teaching for the past three weeks and it's been amazing to watch. She's introduced the students to many new games that correlated with each day's math lesson, she has made reading from CKLA  interesting and engaging for the students, and she incorporated a number of "technology helpers" along the way. She has done a phenomenal job with the students and has been a wonderful asset to our classroom. We'll begin to team teach more and more over the next few weeks as we transition into me taking over all subjects again. I've missed teaching the kids and it's been fun to work in a few lessons this week. Mrs. Evarts will be finished with her student teaching on March 26th, and we will definitely miss her.

Curriculum:

Reading: We're continuing to work through the Renaissance Unit. That unit should be completed by the end of the month and we'll move on to our Native Americans Unit. Students will learn about how Native Americans used the land for survival. They will discover how different groups of people across the land survived in different ways depending on the geographic region they lived in and write an essay to highlight the newly acquired information.

Writing: During the month of March, students will focus on a variety of writing strategies as well as writing for a variety of reasons/audiences. We'll move on to the Native American essay in April. 

Math: We're finishing the fractions chapters this week and will move on to algebra patterns and graphing next week.

Social Studies: We are currently focusing on the forming of the U.S. Government formation.

Science: Mrs. Evarts has been teaching the students about circuits and will begin teaching a unit on magnets next week.

Upcoming:

March 8--Book report due

March 11--9:00-11:00- Kindergarten Registration

March 11 @ 1:00-South Spelling Bee

March 12--End Quarter 3

March 15 and 16--Teacher Contract Days-No school for students or teachers.

March 26--Mrs. Evarts' last day

March 31--Spring Pictures

April 19--1st Quarter 4 Book Report Due

 

Hello Parents,

We’ve now been back from our winter break for a couple of weeks, and we’ve spent our time together productively! The kids came back healthy and ready to learn. We were also very lucky to have welcomed our new student teacher, Mrs. Shannon Everts, to our classroom (more info. below). She’s doing a phenomenal job and the students are really enjoying her teaching style.

We just finished our units on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing decimals and started our first fractions unit yesterday. During this unit, students will extend their knowledge of fractions by learning to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. 

We’re going to be wrapping up our Don Quixote unit in language arts soon. This unit lends itself well to writing an opinion essay, so we’re currently reviewing that process as a class. Once we’ve reviewed opinion writing as a class, students will write their own opinion essay.   

    The students are currently researching/reading information on the bald eagle and how it came to be our national bird (Did you know that some people wanted the turkey to be our national bird?  ).  They’re also researching/reading about turkeys to form an opinion about which bird they would have chosen.

We’ll soon begin our unit on the Renaissance. During this unit, students will learn about many of the great influencers of that time.  Though out this unit we will weave in concepts to help students produce an informational essay.

In science we recently began exploring static electricity. This unit should be very fun for the students as they explore and learn about static and electric currents.

Mrs. Evarts has prepared some very engaging activities to get the students excited to learn about the Revolutionary War. She has included some writing activities along with art and research projects. 

Upcoming…

1-18 No school--Martin Luther King Day

1-22 Cedar Middle school visit

1-25 SEP appointments sent home

1-27 SEP appointment confirmations due 

2-1 First quarter 3 book report due

2-1 thru 2-5 SEP week. School is out at 2:30 daily

1/14/2021

Dear Parents and guardians of Mrs. Sherratt’s class, 

My name is Shannon Evarts I’m so excited to be working with your student for the next 10 weeks as a student-teacher. I grew up in Alaska, this is where I met my husband and had four wonderful children. Our family moved to Cedar City 3½ years ago and I decided to return to school and finish up my teaching degree. This will be my last semester at SUU and I’m very lucky to be assigned to South Elementary. Under Mrs. Sherratt’s direction, I will be teaching the students and hope to give them a positive and educational experience. In the last two weeks, I’ve had the chance to observe in the classroom and began to get to know these amazing kids. I’m so grateful for this opportunity to work with your student and I hope to meet you soon!

Sincerely,

Shannon Evarts

 November 11, 2020

5th Grade November 2020 Newsletter 

Upcoming Dates:

Nov. 12th--24th- NO ORCHESTRA 

Nov. 13th- Mid-Term of Second Quarter

Nov. 16th- Time Circle Party--Movie and a snack--Mrs. Sherratt’s class only

Nov. 20th- All work due to qualify for Workers Holiday

Nov. 24th- Final Day for DARE Essays to be submitted 

Nov. 24th- Worker’s Holiday- READ-A-THON- Clean Pillows, Water and snacks allowed

Nov.24th- Maturation Packets sent home

Nov.24th- Guests from the FRONTIER MUSEUM to visit w/ activities

Nov. 25th-27th- Thanksgiving Holiday

Hello Parents-

Please watch for your students print out to come home and see where they are at with missing work and scores.

Students must have no missing assignments and 80% or higher to qualify for our class

READ-A-THON. 

Reading MOTIVATION- Please encourage your students to keep up their nightly reading goals and

participate in our Reading Revolution Book Report Challenge by reading different genres of books like

Historical Fiction, Battle of the Books, Poetry, Fiction, Award Winner, Folktales, Mystery, Science Fiction.  

It’s Getting COLD OUTSIDE- We need to continue mask breaks through the day. Please send your student

with a warm coat, gloves and a beanie so we can still take breaks outside safely.

Questions or Concerns- Please contact your students teacher. 

darcy.little@ironmail,org, valerie,orton@ironmail.org or beverly,sherratt@ironmail.org

November 11, 2020 Class Update:

Reading: 

We are currently reading about the Maya,, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. The students have learned

some really interesting things about these civilizations and will soon begin a new informative writing

project based on their new knowledge.

Writing/Grammar:

The students have been learning about subject/predicate, linking verbs, run-on sentences,

and words/phrases that compare and contrast. They’ve also been learning about the prefixes

il-, ir-,

and inter-

The students will soon begin writing a 5 paragraph essay that compares/contrasts the Maya,

Aztec,

and Inca civilizations. 

Spelling:

Please help your child practice throughout the week. Interactive practice time  between parent and

child can even replace 4 or 5 minutes of reading time each night.

Math:

The students have been working hard and learning how to add and subtract decimals as well as

completing several problem solving tasks. We will begin Chapter 4; Multiplying Decimals next

week.

Social Studies:

We’ve wrapped up the introduction to the Thirteen Original Colonies and have recently been

learning

about some of the events that led to the American Revolution.

Science:

We finished a short unit on bats where the students (and teacher) learned some really neat

facts

about bats. We will soon begin our next science unit--TBA