I hope that everyone had a great winter break! I’m excited to see everyone on Monday. I can’t wait to hear about your break.

With a new year, we have some new changes in 5A!

• We reset our DOJO points to begin the new year! I hope many students can earn 90% each week on DOJO and participate in Fun Friday. I also hope we all earn lots of points!
• We are going to set 5 new year’s goals for our class this week. Be thinking about your goals for the new year.

If you need anything, please feel free to message me on DOJO. I will get back to you quickly. I typically don’t check this after 9pm.

Congrats to Avery! She is our Wonderful Wildcat!

Project Impact Information:
Thank you to everyone who donated to our Giving Tree! It was a huge success.  I took our donations to a variety of charities over winter break. Everyone was grateful to us. I’m so proud of the way we are impacting our community!

Our next service project will be a coat drive. These donations will go to The Dream Center. With the cold temperatures, many are in need of a warm coat. Check your closets. We will be accepting women, men, and children’s coats!

Many assignments are posted on our canvas page. Your child knows how to get into his/her canvas account. Ask them to show you what we have posted. This is also a great spot to find YouTube videos and Khan Academy videos about the topics we are studying. ALL of the study guides are also posted. Please let me know if you aren’t able to log in. 

Reading:

• Students will be reading a literature book at their reading level with a small group of students.
• I chose the book for each student based on reading level and interest.
• Students will complete a variety of assignments and activities both in class with their groups, during guided reading time with me, and some work will be done independently.
• It is very important for each student to keep up on the assigned reading so that they can participate in the daily group discussions.
• This reading CAN be used on their reading log and WILL count for a fiction book on their quarter 3 reading expectations.
• Please encourage your child to keep reading. They MUST use a minimum of four different reading strategies on their weekly reading logs.
• Reading logs will begin again this week and are due on Friday. For this week ONLY, students will ONLY BE REQUIRED TO READ FOR 80 minutes since they didn’t have the weekend.** If your child already has a modified reading assignment, you may take 20 minutes off of his/her assigned time this week.
• All assignments are also posted on Canvas.
• Reading expectations will go home this week. This does count for a reading grade and can help boost your grade at the end of the quarter. The more you read, the better reader you will be!
• If your child needs help finding a book, I am happy to help them. It is his/her responsibility to come to me and ask for help!

Writing/English: 

• Journals will be assigned this week and will be due the week of Jan. 15. (If you are a Monday journal, you will have an extra day since we don’t have school on Monday.)
• We will begin learning about direct objects this month in language arts! We will also focus on combining sentences. This will help us with our revising and editing during writer’s workshop.
• During writer’s workshop, we will begin learning about opinion pieces. These are sometimes called persuasive writing pieces. We will complete two persuasive writing pieces during quarter 3 in addition to our journal writes and quick writes we will do weekly.
• I was so proud of their short stories. I know the students were really excited about them too! I hope they learned how much fun writing really can be!

Math: 

• Math muscle will begin again ! Math muscle are due on Friday. We will play bingo and students need to have this completed. This is a great review of all of the concepts we have learned so far this year.
• This week we will begin with a review of the skills that we have learned so far this year. I want to get them back in the rhythm and continue to build on what we have learned so far.
• We will spend about 2 weeks studying the geometry and measurement standards.
• We will continue to build on the graphing and learn how it relates to the real world.
• We will learn how to convert measurements using the metric and American standard.
  Students will have to spend some time memorizing some of this! We will do a lot of practice in class, but students need to make sure and take time at home too.
• We will end the unit learning about the different geometrical shapes so that we will be prepared for our volume and surface area unit that will begin toward the end of January.
• We will have some assignments that students will complete on FrontRow or Khan Academy.
•  Students are to complete 30 minutes of math websites a week. A great place to start is Xtra Math. Students may then choose from Khan Academy or Frontrowed.  The January math expectations are due on February 1st!

Science

• We will start a new unit on Mixtures and Solutions.
• The vocabulary and assignments will also be posted on Canvas.
• Students will do assignments in class. Most assignments will be hands on and there is a lot of collaboration with other students.

Social Studies

• We will begin Daily Geography again this week.
• Students will have Monday and Tuesday to finish up the project they were working on before break about the Civil War. These will be presented at the end of the week.
• This will act as their assessment of the chapter.
• We will then study Chapter 4:Reconstruction.
• There will be daily activities and assignments that will be done mostly in class.

WINN TIME: 

I’m excited to share that Miss Ferguson will be joining the Wilder-Waite staff this January as an interventionist. Our class will get to have Miss Ferguson in our classroom each day during our WINN time. She will work with a small group to help reinforce math and reading skills and concepts with students.

During our WINN time, we give each student “What I Need Now!” This will just get to continue with a second set of hands!

Shhh! Don’t tell! Let’s see how many read the blog! *** Post your favorite thing you did over break!