Today started off with an assembly with the principal and guidance counselors from Pocahontas Middle School. They went over some things that your child can expect in middle school next year and told them about various sports and clubs that they are able to get involved in. Your child should have brought home a planning guide for 6th-12th grade that will be helpful as you look at course offerings in the future. Course schedules will be released around the second week of February. There will be a planning guide meeting for school year 2014-2015 for parents of rising sixth grade students on Tuesday, January 21 at 6 p.m. in the PMS auditorium. This will be an informational meeting to discuss the course paths for core classes and long term goals. This session is for parents of new or returning Hawks. Then, on Thursday, January 30, there will be a Curriculum Carnival for students and parents where you and your child will have an opportunity to meet all of the teachers, staff, and coaches. This is a drop in event, and will run from 5:30-7:30 with an inclement weather date of Thursday, Feb. 6.
Our trip to the Math and Science Center was a great success. Hopefully your child told you all about some of the fun activities that they were able to do. They listened to fractal music, investigated Sierpinski's triangle, and built a fractal forest. Our next field trip to the YMCA is coming up next Friday, Jan. 24. I am still in need of a male chaperone to help out in the boys' locker room. If you are able to take a few hours off of work and come in, that would be great. If your schedule won't allow for you to ride there and back with us on the bus, you are welcome to meet us there that day. Please sign up on n-list if you can help out. In math, we are beginning our unit on variables, expressions, and equations. As we start this week, we are learning the correct vocabulary for the math terms we will be using and will be applying inverse operations to solve equations as the week goes on. There will be an end-of-unit test at the end of next week. I will let you know the exact day next week. In science, we just began our study of living systems. Your child created a dichotomous key to identify different monsters. I was very proud of their effort and all of the thinking that went into figuring out how classify the monsters so that each one would be identified through the key. Tomorrow in writing is the culmination of all of our hard work with Fairy Tales on Trial. We will be having the trial filmed in the library. The students are very excited to be filmed. When I get more details on the end product of this, I will let you know. I am not sure if the tape will be aired on the HCPS school channel or if it will be used for training purposes for other teachers. And finally, the PTA meeting is Thursday night and will the winter show will be put on by the fifth grade students! Come out and see, "It's a SNOW DAY, Charlie Brown!" The students have been working hard and are ready to put on a show you won't soon forget. Mrs. Garcia is sending home notices with your child tomorrow that has more specifics on it. You should have your child to the school by 6:50. Have a great rest of the we
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What a chilly start to 2014! I am happy to be back at school now that the winter holidays are behind us. However, it was nice to have a two hour delay to help ease us all back into the transition after two weeks of sleeping in!
We have two field trips coming up this month. Our first is scheduled this Friday to the Math and Science Innovation Center for a lesson on fractals. As this will tie in with math, I am very excited to see what the lesson is all about! The second trip is to the YMCA on Friday, 1/24. I am in need of a male parent volunteer to go with us and chaperone in the boys' dressing room. If you have a volunteer form on file are able to help us out, please let me know and I will get more details to you. This week in math, we reviewed what makes a number even or odd. I ask you to challenge your child to draw a picture to illustrate the difference between the two concepts. We also learned about Prime and Composite numbers and some divisibility rules to help quickly discern whether a number is prime or composite. We will be having our test on Friday. Next week, we will begin working with variables. In science we began our unit on Living Systems. This week, the students are focusing on creating a dichotomous key to sort out organisms that they colored and named. In writing, we are focusing on comma usage this week. Because of the shortened schedules, we have not had much time to work on a prompt. I am going to make a copy of the prompts that your child may see on the SOL test in March. I ask that you take the time to look at each of these with your child and talk about how they could write something for them. It's especially beneficial to look at the ones that your child doesn't "like". These are often the ones that they feel they might have the most trouble writing to. If they have a plan of attack, and that is the prompt that they are randomly assigned that morning, it should make for a much more pleasant writing experience for them. We will be using some of the prompts as we gear up for the test during class time, but I wanted you to be able to see exactly what the prompts will be. And finally, our PTA meeting with the fifth grade chorus performance is next week. Mrs. Garcia will be sending home more information as the date approaches. I can't wait to s |
Mrs. Gosney5th Grade Teacher Archives
May 2022
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