Happy New Year!

A Week in Review

January 7 - 11

 

Virtues Awards:

Jack Don. has earned a Virtues Award for showing the virtues of DILIGENCE and JOYFULNESS. Jack is always hard at work and he does it all with a smile! Keep up the good work Jack, you're an excellent 5th grade leader!

Ben Y. has earned a Virtues Award for showing the virtue of DILIGENCE! Ben demonstrated critical thinking with his thoughtful responses and focus on excellence during Social Studies!

 

Reading:

We spent our first week back reviewing routines and using reading strategies during independent reading. We discussed critical thinking and what that looks like when we read. We know that critical thinkers ask questions, so we took time this week to jot down the questions we were asking ourselves during independent reading. We shared them in small groups. Asking questions about the text deepens our comprehension.

 

Writing:

Students became comic strip authors this week! Students were given a writing prompt that guided them to create a comic strip depicting an event from their winter vacation. The students were very engaged in this writing lesson and I'm very proud of how focused they were

 

Math:

Our fraction unit has come to an end. We spent Monday and Tuesday reviewing the major concepts from Unit 5: Adding and Subtracting Fractions. On Wednesday we took the end-of-unit assessment. One of the biggest challenges for students was demonstrating the decimal equivalent to a given fraction and we focused heavily on that during our review.

 

Science:

We started our Mixtures and Solutions unit by administering the pre-test on Monday. Kari, from the University of Washington, was here to oversee the assessment and collect the data. She'll use the test to compare results with the post test we'll give at the end of the unit.

 

Social Studies:

We used the "Question Formulating Technique" or "QFT" to start Chapter 8 Slavery, in our History Alive! curriculum. Students viewed a focus picture and read a statement based on the picture and used their critical thinking skills to generate questions. Then, students worked in groups to sort their questions into open-ended and closed questions. As a class, we chose the top three questions from each group, the ones that we thought were the most discussion worthy. We'll use those questions to guide our focus in this chapter as we read about three specific dilemmas that the West Africans faced.

Thanks for another great week of enthusiasm and excellence. I hope you have a relaxing weekend. Go Seahawks!!

~Mrs. Hatlestad

Upcoming Events:
1/16 - STAR Reading and Math test
1/21 - No School in observance of MLK Jr. Day
2/4 - 5th Grade "Human Growth and Development" class begins
2/9 - Medina PTSA Auction
2/18-2/22 - Mid-Winter Break