Fifth Grade Times
Middle School Recommendation Forms:
Please be sure to return your child’s course recommendation form for Forest
Oak Middle School to your child’s teacher by February 12th!
Valentine’s Day Parties: We are excited to be having our Valentine’s Day Parties on Friday, February 12th from 11-12! If students would like to give Valentines out to their classmates, they must make sure that every child in the class
receives one from them. Please look for a class list to be sent home by your
child’s teacher!
Family Life Information:
If you are interested in learning more about what your child will be learning during our family life instruction this year, please join us on February 17th at 6:00
PM in the media center! Permission forms for this unit are due by March 15th,
2016
Main Office Phone Number
301-840-8165
Feb. 2016
Important
Dates:
 2/12: Valentine’s Day
Parties
 2/15: No
School–
President’s
Day
 2/17: Family Life
Meeting
6:00 PM
 2/26: Early
release–
Grading
Jennifer Peterman
[email protected]
Eunice Kim
[email protected]
Erin Kleinman
[email protected]
Mai-Anh Weir
[email protected]
***Please visit the following website for more detailed information about what students are
learning in the third Marking Period!
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/2.0/parent-newsletters.aspx
Curriculum 2.0 Skills
Students will focus on elaboration and intellectual risk-taking. Elaboration means extending
your thoughts and fully explaining your reasoning. Intellectual risk-taking refers to being willing to challenge yourself and extend learning. It also means being willing to speak up when unsure of an answer, and state your opinion and thoughts even though it may differ with other
people’s thoughts.
Inquiry Project and Information Literacy (Media)
Students will be utilizing print and online sources, including student safe search engines to gain
background knowledge on topics and places for the settings of their independent fiction stories. They have been exposed to the three genres they are able to select from. These include: realistic, historical fiction, and mystery. Please inspire your child to begin thinking
about a topic and or setting. If they are interested in historical fiction, we are encouraging
them to select one specific event, not an entire time period. They will learn how to effectively
evaluate print books and website/online source content and authority. They will look for accuracy and bias. This month will mostly consist of note taking.
Math
Students will continue to focus
on multiplying fractions by fractions. Students will work with
fractions smaller than, equal to,
and greater than one. They will also examine how multiplication can be interpreted as
scaling, and draw conclusions between how
different size numbers interact with each
other through multiplication. Students will
also apply their multiplication concepts to
real life situations, such as finding area of
a rectangle.
Science
Students will study Earth
and Space science this
marking period. They will
examine properties of the
moon, the sun, stars, and
the planets. Students will
also explain Earth’s movements in our solar system.
Social Studies
Reading
Students will examine poetry and realistic fiction. They will read two Junior Great Book stories and determine the theme and characteristics of realistic fiction that are present in each.
They will also read a graphic novel to see how
stories can be told through pictures as well as
words. In addition, students will examine stories
within the genres of historical fiction, realistic
fiction, and mysteries to prepare for their third
inquiry project.
Writing
Students will write a research based opinion
piece to convince others to agree with their
perspective on a controversial issue. They will
include textual evidence, and will continue to revise and edit to improve content and coherency.
At the end of the month, students will begin to
do research to write an extended narrative story within the genre of mystery, realistic fiction,
or historical fiction.
Art
Students will study geography in the United States.
They will look at geographic
and human characteristics
of land, and will determine
why certain areas of the
country are more populated than others.
They will also examine changes in transportation over history.
In February, fifth graders will
begin a sculpture of an animal
using found objects including
cereal boxes, paper towel
rolls, and brown lunch bags.
We will then experiment with
paper mache paste and newspaper strips to give
our sculptures a strong foundation, before decorating with paints, pipe cleaners and other fun
objects found in the art room!
Instrumental Music
Music
The students continue to work hard in instrumental music. Keep encouraging them
to practice at home to help improve their
rate of progress!
PE
In Physical Education, grade 5 is finishing their volleyball unit in addition to
starting their rhythms and dance unit.
Fifth grade will be identifying differences in
two performances of the same selection of music. Students will also be notating short melodic
phrases from dictation using standard notation.