Week of August 15th, 2016

We owe a HUGE thank you to Layla and the Winstead family for their help in redesigning our desks to
better fit our classrooms! Our students are so excited to have plenty of room for their chairs, and sturdy baskets
for their books!
We are busy wrapping up Unit 1 on whole numbers. This week, the focus is on multiplying and
dividing by tens, hundreds, and thousands, as well as prime factorization and exponents. This is a
lot of new information, and these fifth graders are working hard! We will have a quiz on this
material on Friday.
We

are finishing out our first section of Myths, Folktales and Legends- ask your
student how their Show What You Know went! Get ready, our next Language
Arts unit will be
the classic novel, Don Quixote!
We have studied the notable lakes of Africa, South America and North America! Ask your
student about their Show What You Know! We are moving on to the lakes of Europe and
Asia this week-check in with your student to find out what they have learned!

Our

grammar focus has been on prepositions and prepositional phrases, and the
infinitive verb form. Ask your student what prepositions, what they do, and how
you identify an infinitive!
Domain based spelling words will be sent home on Friday- be on the lookout!

Your 5th grader has a weekly homework sheet where they are to
write their daily assignments-make sure that they are showing it to you nightly! If your student is
working hard, but continuing to struggle with an assignment, please stop them and send a note so that we can
help with understanding. Homework should be a time to reinforce what was learned at school and not a time to
practice a skill incorrectly or to the point of frustration. Homework is only excused with a parent note- without
penalty. Late, unexcused work may be turned in the next day for a lower overall grade.

Week of August 15th, 2016

** STUDENT MATERIALS**
Ideally, we would like student to have one large binder 2 - 3 inches that can hold all of
their subjects together. Students will be switching between two classes daily and we have
found that those with their materials in one place are having better success getting from
place to place with all of their materials. Let Ms. Brackett know if you need help sourcing
a binder, she has a few extra that can be re-used from last year.
WATER BOTTLES!
Students are allowed and encouraged to keep a water bottle with them at school. They are given time
before class and during lunch to refill their water. This should give them plenty of opportunities for
hydration without a need to leave to go to the water fountain during class. If you would like to partially
freeze your water bottles, please give your student a designated sock to catch the precipitation.
NEW MICROWAVE!!!!
Thank you to Ms. Dickens for donating a microwave to 5 th grade!
Your students will now be able to heat up lunches (on their own) during our lunch block.
A few notes:
- We will send home a permission form for students to use the microwave. Teachers are usually
otherwise engaged during lunch, so if your student needs to warm something up, it will need to be
on their own. Students also need to be able to gauge proper containers, timing and temperatureits easy to make things too hot!
- Please be mindful that lunch is only 25 minutes, and that we cannot be using the microwave during
class time. Therefore, if we have too many students wishing to use the microwave each day, the
time will quickly run out. Please be considerate of the time requirements involved in sending
microwaveable lunches.
LUNCH TIME VOLUNTEERS!
We have had some parent interest in volunteering to hang out with our 5 th graders during lunch so that
we can some food ourselves-thank you! If you have any interest in volunteering on a dedicated day,
please let us know!

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, we hope that you are having a fabulous week!

Mrs. Althoff (kalthoff@excelsiorca.org)

Ms. Brackett (sbrackett@excelsiorca.org)