Hello Wonderful 5th Grade Parents!

Happy Fair Week! I hope you all partake in the festivities together. 

This week we are learning:

ELA (grammar, fluency, phonics/spelling, comprehension, vocabulary)
Grammar:
We are focusing on common and proper nouns. We are learning they both are nouns but one has a name and one does not.
We also complete sentence diagramming. If you google it there are some great examples. If we can understand how our different types of speech help us create sentences, we gain a better knowledge of the English language and also help develop our speech production.
Spelling:
Phonics and spelling go hand in hand. Being a former primary teacher, I teach using phonics to spell multisyllabic words. During my Master's program I studied decoding and encoding. It is so nice to see how I can still use this teaching method in upper grades, but this time with multisyllabic words. =)
This week in spelling we are spelling words with the Long U patterns. It can be tricky only because we have words that say /oo/ or /U/. Vocabulary:
Every week we have a set of 10 vocabulary words. I first started teaching all 10 in one day! I felt that was not purposeful and did not "stick" with the kids at the end of the day. So, for now, we do 5 a day. It has been amazing to see their understanding the past few days! We also collaborate together to use the frayer model to find synonyms and antonyms. 
Comprehension:
This week our story is to sequence events in our story. . 

Math: 
I have set the expectation that students must master their multiplication facts this year. I also mentioned to them, this should have been mastered in 3rd grade.We have been working on multidigit multiplication. They all know how to do the "process" BUT we have issues when they have the wrong answer for multiplication. =(
We are transitioning to Long Division. Students are doing okay. However we need to know our facts to pick the best answer. 

Writing:
I will be using RACES to drive my writing instruction. It is a great writing strategy and I even used it in my graduate school and always received so many compliments in my papers. However, this year my goal is to get my class to write multiple paragraphs. 
This week's topic is: "What are the benefits of sports?"
We are currently finding 3 benefits. We will use RACES to outline our writing to write our 3 paragraphs. Then we will put them together in an essay format.