Hello parents,
I am venturing into the world of blogging. My hope is to be able to give you all more insight into what is happening in the wonderful world of Mr. Halley's 5th grade classroom. I will also be using this blog post as another way to send out quick announcements related to both our classroom but also Lake Elmo Elementary School. So, here is a quick recap of what we have been (and will be) working on.

We spent this week working on a writing project writing a personal narrative story.. The kids wrote a 1-2 page story about one specific event in their life.

In this writing process students learned a number of things; primarily we spent some time focusing on your general grammar rules while also developing the idea of how to write a three to five paragraph story with a beginning middle and end.

Generally one of the most challenging aspects of this project or any writing project is the editing and proofreading stage. I felt the students did a nice job of coming up with stories on their own, and of course adding details is always a challenge, but beyond that the editing and proofreading is a real challenge. My goal this year is to help students become better editors and proofreaders and to talk about the distinction between these two.

Next week in math we will continue our work in unit 3 which is a unit focusing on the addition and subtraction of decimals. In literacy we will be working we will be starting a non fiction unit that unit will last for about a month. and we will be finishing up our current science unit which is focusing on variables.

In our variable unit we are learning about what a variable is. A variable is anything that you can change in an experiment that might affect the outcome.  For example we made something called a life boat and used pennies as passengers to figure out how many passengers could fit in a boat. The variable that we tested here was how many passengers can fit in a boat depending on the size of the boat. Ask your child if they know what a variable is. If they are unsure have them access their science notebook or have them check in with me.

I had someone ask me the other day, what advice would you give to a 5th grade parent now that we are almost one quarter of the way into the school year. The main advice I would give to parents right now is to make sure that your kid is reading for 20 to 30 minutes every single night.   Also a great resource that is available for you is Skyward. Through Skyward you will be able to check to see if your student is caught up with their work and you'll be able to see their scores. Skyward can be a little clunky to work with at times so if you are accessing it and have questions please don't hesitate to contact me. The last thing is to make sure to let me know if you have any questions. We talk all the time about the importance of students at this age becoming more independent and advocating for themselves, but sometimes we as adults forget to do the same thing. Please don't hesitate to contact me with questions. Have a great weekend!!!