Week of October 26, 2009

Week of October 26, 2009

Sunshine Math continues on Tuesday for those that signed up. The worksheets will be due back on Friday.

No school for students on Monday! Have fun with your family on Monday while we plan.

The Fall Symphony of Fun Carnival was an unmitigated success due to the support of of the Chets Creek PTA and families like yours! Without you, nothing like this could ever take place. We are truly blessed to have an awesome PTA and awesome families!

On Friday the 30th, Flag Raising will be observed in the Community Courtyard at 9:05 A.M..

Also on Friday the 30th, CCE 5th grade students will attend a field experience to the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Buses will leave at 10:45 A.M..

Report cards go home on Tuesday the 3rd of November!
The first grading period officially ended on Friday, October 23. The 5th Grade Recognition Ceremony will be on Thursday, November the 5th at 2:15 P.M. in the dining Room.

Please turn in your permission slips for our IMAX double-feature scheduled for Friday, November 13. We will get to see a feature on spelunking (cave exploration) and on under-sea exploration. The cost of the trip is $12.00.

Thanks to those of you that have already turned in permission slips and money!

Just as a precautionary "heads-up", please note that our new grade reporting system will generate report cards that will not have plusses (+) or minuses (-) next to the letter grades. This is a change from prior years. The grading scale will be:
90-100 A
80-89 B
70-79 C
60-69 D
Below 60 F
Parents/guardians should also be getting access to the Oncourse online grading system at the beginning of the 2nd nine- week marking period. We will keep you posted, as we are still a few weeks away from that date.

On Tuesday, I plan to return the BONYK PMA (Progress Monitoring Assessment). This was our "final exam" for the BONYK unit. PMAs are not revisable due to their nature (many multiple choice answers). I will also return many revised tests. Please sign and return all of these tests. We keep them so that if we have time we can review any tricky concepts.
I do not think that we will have any tests this week, but the following week I would be expecting the October EDC test (please be sure to review your triangle information).
I would also expect our first test from our new unit Name That Portion (NTP). Knowing all of the fraction-percent equivalents from student sheet 5 will be go along way to having a successful experience when taking that exam.

Tuesday: HW sheet #10 goes home. Please use your own judgment about working ahead. I know that many students have after school activities, and working ahead may be a very good plan.
We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we will begin our next math investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals.

Wednesday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we continue our investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals. We will review Monday and Tuesday's homework.

Thursday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we continue our math investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals.

Friday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we continue our math investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals. We will review Thursday and Friday's homework.

Have a wonderful week. :)

Week of October 19th

Week of October 19, 2009

• Sunshine Math continues on Monday for those that signed up. The worksheets will be due back on Friday.


• Wednesday is an Early Release Day!!

• Friday is our Symphony of Fun Carnival from 6:00 - 9:00. Thank you to all the parents and family members who have volunteered to work our Big Slide Booth. In addition, the front office is asking for candy donations for the Trick or Treating that evening.
  

We will have our final test on Building on Number You Know on Tuesday, October 20th.

For the BONYK final test, some of the concepts that are implied are an understanding of:

skip counting forward and backward by a given number

identifying properties of a multiple tower:

what number are we counting by

what will be the next multiple of ten

how many numbers are in the tower

how does the 3rd number in the tower relate to the 30th number

be able to divide and multiply

pick a "perfect pair"

and

Know what to do with remainders

If the remainders are kids we cannot make them into a fraction and spilt them up equally. That would be illegal and messy! If the remainders are pizzas, we probably will split the remainders up evenly. Say 8 kids want to share 9 pizzas, each kid would get 1 whole pizza and 1/9 of the last pizza.

Monday: HW sheet #9 goes home. Please use your own judgment about working ahead. I know that many students have after school activities, and working ahead may be a very good plan.

We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we will begin our next investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals.

Tuesday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we will continue to work on our math investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals. We will take our final test on Building on Numbers You Know on Tuesday.

Wednesday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we continue our investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals. We will review Monday and Tuesday's homework.

Thursday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we continue our math investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals.

Friday: We will continue our work on EDC (Every Day Counts-Calendar Math), and we continue our math investigation, Name That Portion: Fractions, Percents and Decimals. We will review Thursday and Friday's homework.

I noticed something worthy of mention while grading the BONYK (Building On Numbers You Know or Boink!) quiz. Students that are comfortable thinking of multiple towers as decomposed multiplication problems did very well on the test. For example, if a student was asked what number the 13th person would say if they were counting by 23s, students that saw that as (23 X 10) + (23 X 3) were very successful. Those that relied on actually adding 23 thirteen times were not as successful. By 5th grade, students should not be reliant upon adding up, as multiplication is much more efficient.

Treasure Chest

We are in need of items for our Treasure Chest. The students really enjoy getting a big box of candy such as Lemon Heads, Sugar Babies, and Hot Tamales. Other items like bouncy balls, notepads or any thing a fifth grader would like to pull out of the Treasure Chest would be greatly appreciated.

Scholastic Book Club Online

Dear Families,
You can now place your Scholastic Book Club orders online!
Browse all the great monthly Club selections at low prices and order online. Plus, our class earns a FREE book every time a parent orders online.
Here's how it works:
1. Use the information below to access the Scholastic Book Clubs Web site.

2. Browse the titles with your child, and place your order with your credit card.

3. Your order will come to me, and your credit card payment will go directly to Scholastic's secure server. There's no need to send money to school.

4. After I submit the entire class's order to Scholastic, your order will be delivered to our classroom for your child to take home.

www.scholastic.com/bookclubs

Class User Name: chetscreek5th
Password: readers

Ordering online is the most convenient way to use Scholastic Book Clubs. You can order anytime, right up until the online order due date. You'll also get instant access to over 500 additional titles plus online-only specials and discounts.

And don't forget: Every time a parent places an order online, we earn a FREE book for our classroom library!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Shea Beaudreau.

Update

The main page of www.cce5thgrade.com has been updated.

On Monday, field trip permission slips for the Jacksonville Symphony will go home, and since the trip is 100% FREE, we can expect the signed forms back by Tuesday. Right? Thanks!

We also need all Sunshine Math permission forms for those wanting to participate back by Tuesday. Again, thanks.

Please note that Wednesday is an early release day. Dismissal will start at 2:00 P.M..

Art to Remember purchases are due back by this Friday the 9th. These do make cool gifts!

Also, Friday is Fall Picture Day

Double-Trouble and Split-It

Recently we have added a "game" to our EDC notebooks. Double-Trouble and Split-It are games that are designed to get students to strategically think about doubling and splitting numbers. These skills are crucial if a student is to build great mental number sense.

For example:

When I ask kids to split 1,700, many kids balk, because they see 17 groups of 100 as an odd number of hundreds. Most kids are not seeing this as 8 1/2 groups of 100. However, most students can readily replace 1,700 with 1,600 + 100, and they can easily split these numbers to get to 850! This still may not seem important, but since the product of 17 X 10 is so easily calculated, it seems logical that 17 X 5 (half as big as 17 X 10) should be easily found if 1,700 can be easily split.

In a similar way, being able to double numbers with ease leads to being able to double small factor pairs into larger factor pairs. If 7 X 2 = 14, then 7 X 4 is twice as big. So, 7 X 4 = 28. Then, 7 X 8 = 56, and 7 X 16 = 112...likewise, 17 X 2 = 34, 17 X 4 = 68...17 X 4 = 68, 17 X 40 = 680, and 17 X 80 = 1,360 ...all done through doubling.

When doubling a number, many students find it easiest to double the largest place value first and then work through the smaller place values.

Doubling a number like 1, 486 might look like 1,000 + 1,000 = 2,000...400 +400 = 800 ...80 +80 = 160...6 + 6 = 12...added together, the sum is 2,972.

These are VERY important concepts!
Please practice.
It's the kind of thing you can do in the car.