It’s the end of the second trimester on Friday!  Hard to believe that two thirds of the school year has already flown by! On Tuesday, we had a lower school Town Hall meeting – the theme of the month is “focus.” It’s the trimester celebration season, so the fifth grade has been (and will be) enjoying helping with and experiencing other classes’ celebrations.  We got to help the Kindergarteners make buildings for their city again this week.  We also got to learn about the inventions made by the second graders.  Tomorrow, we will have the opportunity to shop the 4th grade Market Day and talk to all the 4th grade entrepreneurs about their products.

Here’s what the fifth graders have been learning about this week:

Reading: Students are starting a literary essay on their novels that they just finished.  This week, we discussed the different options for a literary thesis statement.  Tomorrow, students will begin a brainstorm.

Writing: We are finishing up our poetry learning this week.  Limericks and sonnets are the topic for Friday!

Language Study: We have been playing with words this week.  The goal is to increase vocabulary and think carefully about the relationships between words (this helps with word memory, retrieval, and usage in speech and writing!).

Social Studies: Students located primary sources to add to their Explorer slideshows.

Science: Students worked on their circuit boards.  Our Trimester 2 Celebration is coming up next week!

Math: We completed our unit by learning about metric conversions with decimal numbers. The final assessment for this unit will be on Friday.