Spring break has come and gone. We’re into the weirdness of summer temperatures followed by winter chills. Do you change your tires yet or no? No right answer. Anyways, we’re buzzing here in grade five and have a packed month ahead of us. Here’s what we have coming up.

Important Dates:

Friday, April 15^th – Good Friday (no school for all students)

Monday, April 18^th – PD Day (no school for all students)

Thursday, April 21^st – Fun Lunch & Spirit Day (Dress like fave teacher/career day)

Tuesday, April 26^th – Wednesday, April 27^th – Kamp Kiwanis

Language Arts

We have begun our next novel study on “Tuck Everlasting” by Natalie Babbitt. This book provides plenty of engaging conversation and I look forward to hearing what the students think about it. If you would like to read along, here is a digital copy (FULL TEXT Tuck Everlasting.pdf).

We have begun our second Creative Writing unit and students have been working on adding more description to their sentences in a variety of ways, such as using more detailed nouns and verbs, and stretching their sentences out using adjectives and adverbs. Students will also be viewing a selection of entertaining Pixar “shorts” while we discuss elements of story writing while also incorporating some of these Pixar Story Rules as shared by a real-life Pixar story writer.

Math

Long division has been a grind but we are steadily working hard at it. Students have had plenty of practice with following the “DMSB” steps and are now combining their skills of multiplication and long division in a problem-solving context. Again, knowledge of basic facts has really been the difference between success and frustration with these concepts, so please keep plugging away at those nightly, if possible. As mentioned before, here are some resources to help with learning and mastering Long Division:

• This is a video explaining how we remember DMSB - Dead Monkeys Smell Bad. 
• Here are the class notes (1. Division Notes w DMSB.pdf) that we used to introduce and explain division. 
• For a review of the long division algorithm broken into each step, you can reference this document (DMSB Explanation.pdf) which explains what they need to do and when.
• Lastly, I've made the DMSB "Danger Zones" document (2. DMSB Danger Zones.pdf) which focuses on common areas where students go wrong. 

Science

As mentioned in a previous email, we are beginning our Electricity & Magnetism unit and each student will be receiving an individual kit with supplies at a cost of $22. Thank you to those who have already covered this fee in PowerSchool. Students have been learning how a flow of electrons can create electricity and will complete a number of super cool experiments over the next few weeks to demonstrate this. For more information, resources and links students are encouraged to explore the Electricity & Magnetism section of the Science Resources page as well as the Electricity & Magnetism Web Links page.

Social Studies

We are SO close to finishing our unit on the Regions of Canada. We went down to Fish Creek Park last week to complete our Amazing Race challenge for the Cordillera and will begin learning about our last region, the Arctic, this week. This will then allow us to kick off our study on the multiple Histories of Canada, looking at Confederation, Newcomers, Indigenous Peoples, the Famous Five, the story of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the North-West Mounted Police.

Thank you to all of you for making the effort to attend last weeks information session on our Grade 5 overnight camp. We’re really excited and we know the students are all going to have the greatest time. This is, and has been, one of the absolute highlights of grade five in the past and we’re excited to welcome this crew into the experience as well.

Sincerely,

Daniel Polsky
Grade 5 Teacher | Learning Leader
Fish Creek School | cbe.ab.ca
t| 403-777-6400 f| 403-777-6409
twitter @mr_polsky
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