Important Dates

Friday, May 17^th – PD Day (no school for all students)

Monday, May 20^th – Victoria Day (schools closed)

Friday, May 24^th – Sports Day/Family Picnic 

Health

We will begin our unit on Human Sexuality on Monday, May 27^th, and it should run for about 6 classes or so. If you do not feel comfortable with your child receiving these lessons at school, you are welcome to opt-out. Forms came home this past week, however, ONLY return the signed portion if you would like your child to not participate. If you are happy with your child receiving these lessons, then there is no need to return the forms. You can review the grade 5 curriculum here: https://teachingsexualhealth.ca/teachers/grade/grade-5/

Outdoor School

In case you didn’t hear, our overnight fieldtrip at the Canadian Rockies Outdoor Learning Center was an amazing success! We had a blast, and really could not have made it all happen without all the help of our amazing parent volunteers. The facility was very impressed with all our efforts, and our students received a glowing report from the facility owner. Throughout the trip, we took several awesome photos, and will be sharing the photos with you all soon. Thank you for all your efforts in having your children so well-prepared for this fieldtrip. It was the best time.

Phys Ed

Mrs. Barva will be running our gymnastics unit until May 16^th. There will also be an Aussie football residency from May 27^thto 31^st. Sports Day is on Friday, May 24^th. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Jenn Ryan (missjennzs@yahoo.ca).

Language Arts

We are currently reading “Restart” as our class novel study, and plan to finish in the next few weeks. As always, we place a heavy emphasis on listening skills during our class novel studies, as one of our report card indicators is forming an understanding while listening. If your child is not able to give you the main ideas from our novel, then perhaps this could be an opportunity to discuss their seating choices and active listening skills while being read to.

We are working away at our creative writing unit, as students are in the process of writing, editing or illustrating their fractured fairy tales. 

Math

We have completed our units on fractions and decimals. Their final test will be coming home shortly to get signed, as well as their May fact frenzy which was completed this past Monday. With that out of the way, we’ve begun one of my favourite units in math - Geometry & Shape and Space. You can view all the links, interactive lessons and resources here on Shape & Space Math Resources Page. It’s a large unit with many pieces to it. We will be introducing our large unit project this week and we can’t wait to see it grow. Stay tuned!

We will quickly review  the meaning of “dimensions” as in 1D (a line), 2D (a shape) and 3D (an object) and how that affects/dictates the units we use in measurement. We will begin by exploring regular vs irregular polygons and other 3D objects. This will set us up for  transformational geometry. We’ll be working with the three types of Transformations (Translations, Rotations and Reflections) which is a lot of fun as we get to throw different types of Polygons around in different, random directions. You can also check out some of the class notes that the students will be using.

Science

Walter White is back in the classroom and frankly, I’m pumped. Classroom Chemistry is one of my favourite units in Science. We get to make a mess, blow things up, mix chemicals together and really just explore the chemistry of our world. It’s awesome. First things first though, we’ve started understanding the different States of Matter (Solid, Liquid, Gas). Beyond knowing these terms, we’re focused on understanding how depending on the state of a substance, its atoms and molecules will be moving faster or slower and will be more densely packed or more spread out. We’ve begun learning and using the Scientific Method and are rapidly becoming ‘Like, OMG, For Real Scientists!’

This work allowed us to prove and explore the two main types of Mixtures - homogeneous and heterogeneous. This will be followed by separating mixtures, and then acids & bases. It’s right around Acids & Bases time that things get awesome and explode-y as we demonstrate reversible and irreversible changes. Anyways, feel free to explore the Chemistry Web Links and the other chemistry resources on the Science Resources page.

Social Studies

We have completed our unit on the NWMP, and students are also finishing up their songs about the regions. We will be having our ‘Regions of Canada’ album release party on Thursday at which point we will share the songs with you all. They’re genuinely fantastic and the students have worked tremendously hard on them. We will continue to look at the history of Canada by exploring the World Wars, the lead up to Confederation, the development of Canada and the story of the CPR.

Thanks,

Daniel Polsky
Grade 5 Teacher | Learning Leader
Fish Creek School | cbe.ab.ca
t | 403-777-6400 | twitter @mr_polsky