Waters Landing Elementary School
Fifth Grade Newsletter
September 2013
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Important Dates
Sept 2
Labor Day
No School
Sept 5
Rosh Hashanah
No School
Welcome Back To School!! Our year is of to an exciting beginning.
It is hard to believe that the summer has come to an end. We welcome you
and your children back to Waters Landing.
We are very excited to have Mr. Chechik in Mr. Warner’s classroom
this year. He is a Graduate Intern from the University of Maryland.
Important Dates and Info:
Sept 6
PTA Sponsored Back-toSchool Picnic
6pm
Back to School Night for 5th grade is September 10th at
7pm.
Sept 9
Back to School Night
Grades K-2
7pm
Are you interested in having your child apply for the Highly Gifted Program at Roberto Clemente Middle School? See below for
due dates and contact information.
WLES contact person: Mrs. Laureno
Sept 10
Back to School Night
Grades 3-5
7pm
Sept 27
Early Release Day
School Dismissed at 12:55
Oct 10
Nov 8
Dec 7
Parent/student Info night at RCMS
Application Deadline
Testing
Reading
As we begin the school year we will be conducting Fountas & Pinnell
running records to establish small guided reading groups. Homework may not
appear the first week or two or it may be that we use “little books” rather than
novels for a few days until we get all testing and grouping completed.
In whole group reading we will begin with the new reading genre of
adventure. While reading an adventure novel as a read-a-aloud we will focus
on the comparison of characters, settings, or events, and text structure.
We will have a focus on explicit vocabulary instruction, figurative language,
word relationships, and homographs.
Social Studies
We begin the year in Social Studies by composing classroom rules, reviewing
expectations, and reviewing and developing a Baldrige Classroom Environment.
We will discusses the causes of contemporary conflict and compromises and
relate them to historical conflict and compromises that occurred
between the colonist and Britain. We will review literature looking
for historical evidence to support and challenge colonial reactions
to changes in British policies; roles and viewpoints.
Science
With our new curriculum Health Education is intertwined with
Science. We will spend the first three to five lessons focusing on social emotional skills and personal well being. Once that is complete
we will begin “true” science.
Our first unit of study will be Force and Motion. We will observe the distance, direction, speed, and time it takes for an object to move from one point to another
point. Students will have the opportunity to do this with ready made objects as well
as self-engineered objects.
5th Grade Math
We begin math by reviewing basic math facts and then applying that knowledge by
multiplying double digit numerals by single digit numerals and double digit numerals by
double digit numerals using the standard algorithm. We will have discussion about place
value, “place holders”, and expanded notation and multiplication.
We move from practicing multiplication to applying our knowledge of multiplication
to calculating volume. We begin volume with the study of right rectangular prisms, and
counting unit cubes (cubic cm, cubic in, cubic ft). Students will be challenged to find/
discover the relationship between calculating volume and multiplication. Students
will also use additive properties to find the volume of right rectangular prisms.
Students will be asked to evaluate expressions that contain parentheses,
brackets, and braces. Students will also interpret expression expressions that contain parentheses, brackets, and braces. Without solving but by estimating.
Math A (6th Grade Math)
Students in Math A will have a very exciting and challenging year. They
will be under the tutelage of Mr. Bradshaw. Their first unit of study will include
measures of central tendency (mean-median-mode), data analysis, constructing
and interpreting frequency tables, stem and lead plots., graphs, and reasoning
about misleading statistics that effect measures of central tendency. This math
class follows the MCPS 2003 curriculum. These students will still have end of
unit assessments along with common formative assessments.
Writing
We will focus on composing a narrative. Students will establish a situation, introduce characters, add descriptive details, develop their characters and
add experiences for them, and write a conclusion. We will continue to use the
Writing 6 + 1 Traits both as a teaching tool to write and as a
scoring rubric; a copy can be found in your students data notebook and the writing section in their binder.
Thinking and Academic Success Skills (TASS)
We focus on two TASS skills for most of the first making period; they are
Flexibility and Collaboration. Below is the definition of each:
Flexibility (creative thinking skill) – Being open and responsive to new and diverse ideas and strategies and moving freely among them.
Collaboration (academic success skill) – Working effectively and respectfully to
reach a group goal.
Thank You for all you support in this new school year,
Ms. Cook, Mr. Evans, Mr. Warner, and Mr. Chechik