My really rockin' 5th grade!

Weeks in Review:  March 24-April4

Math:  We have been studying about surface area and volume of cubes and rectangular prisms. We will be learning about triangular prisms.

Writing:  We have written a couple of friendly letters this week; one to a close friend or relative and one to a soldier in Iraq. We will be mailing those (giving them) next week.  We are also starting to discuss historical fictions. We have read a historical fiction from the Civil War. Students will be writing their own historical fictions.

We have also been working with singular and plural possessives ( ‘s  and s’).

Science/Social Studies: This week has been fun. We have been learning about heredity and inherited traits. We have been using punnet squares to predict traits for offspring. We used some fun websites to create albino, long-tailed lemmings and some fun dragons. The kids had a really good time predicting the traits for their dragons and their lemmings.

mendel                     dragons                 Melonhead Family Genes      Camouflage Survival

punnettsquares        Heredity BrainPop    Croc Adaptations         Camouflage video     Build a Fish to Survive

We have also been studying about the Civil War. We have learned about the economy of the northern and the southern states, about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.

Reading: Our guided reading groups are reading some really good books:

Across Five Aprils—a historical fiction about a boy and his family during the Civil War

My Name is Not Angelica—a historical fiction about an African girl captured and brought into slavery

There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom—about a boy that has difficulty in school making friends and finding his “place”—it talks about the decisions that he needs to make in order to turn himself around

Wait Until Helen Comes—a fiction story about a girl that befriends the “spirit” of a girl that suffered an untimely death in a tragic fire

Spelling: All of our spelling words this and next week center around heredity and traits:

inherited, environment, species, offspring, traits, variations, survivial, instincts, population, specialized structure, organism, life cycle, learned behavior, parent organism, genes, resemble, advantages, recessive, dominant, physical attributes

FUN STUFF: We attended Project Youth at BYU on Friday the 28th. The students were divided into small groups and taken on a tour around BYU, were involved in some really fun activities, and attended a high-spirited Pep Rally with some great performers and speakers.

SEP conferences with students and parents were Thursday evening. Mrs. Barrionuevo and I really enjoyed visiting with or GREAT students and their parents. If you were unable to attend, please contact me at kimberlyg@ provo.edu or 374-4955 to make arrangements to meet and talk.

UPCOMING: 5th and 6th grade maturation programs on Friday, April 4th from 3-4 pm.  Please plan on attending with your child if possible.