Room G13

Mrs. Ward & Mrs. Washko

September 2016

Dear Parents,

Welcome to Room G-13! Our names are Kimberly Washko and Victoria Ward. We will be your child's fifth grade teachers for the 2016-2017 school year.

We have created this handbook to help answer any questions that you may have about classroom expectations, general classroom procedures, homework, and curriculum content. We hope that you find this handbook to be a helpful resource throughout the school year.

Another valuable resource is our class website. Please check it out at http://g13wilbur.weebly.com.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us by email: kimberly.washko@colonial.k12.de.us or victoria.ward@colonial.k12.de.us. You can also reach us at 832-6330 ext 1013.

We look forward to working with you to help your child have a successful year in fifth grade!

Sincerely, Kimberly Washko and Victoria Ward

Daily Classroom Schedule

8:35 - 9:00 Morning Meeting9:00 - 10:30 Math

10:30 - 11:00 MINT (Math Intervention)

11:00 - 11:30   Lunch11:30 - 1:30 ELA

1:30 - 2:15 Exploratory2:15 - 2:30 Recess 

2:30 - 3:10 RINT (Reading Intervention)

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Thursday's Schedule 

8:35 - 9:00 Morning Meeting9:00 - 11:00 Social Studies

11:00 - 11:30   Lunch11:30 - 1:30 Science

1:30 - 2:15 Exploratory2:15 - 2:30 Recess 

2:30 - 3:10 RINT (Reading Intervention)

Classroom Expectations, Consequences, and Rewards

The following classroom expectations provide a safe, pleasant working environment for all the members of G13:

Be responsible for your learning.Respect your teachers and classmates.Cooperate with your teachers and classmates.

In order for students to have a successful year of learning, it is important that they are responsible, respectful, and cooperative. On the first day of school, students will help create more specific rules for each expectation. If a student chooses not to be responsible or interferes with the learning of others, there will be consequences for their actions such as: a warning, student conference with teacher during recess, loss of recess/student writes a letter home, or parent phone call by teacher and/or student.

Our consequences all focus on the student identifying the difficulties he/she had in class that day and what better choices that he/she can make in the future. Our goal is for all students to be present in our classroom to learn. However, if a student is disrupting the learning of other students, he/she will be sent to another classroom for a "time-out" or the office with a referral.

We also reward students for positive behavior. Students are able to earn daily tickets for compliments they receive throughout the day. The tickets are put into a drawing at the end of that day to win an item from the Prize Box. They also work together to earn cubes as a team. The team with the most cubes at the end of the month will receive a special prize. In addition, students can also receive weekly All-Star coupons. Please read on to learn more about these exciting incentives.

Teamwork

Your child will sit with a team of five or six students. Each team will change monthly. This team experience is designed to

encourage students to work together toward a common goal. The team will encourage all members to have papers signed on time, be prepared to begin lessons after transitions, cooperate with one another, and keep desks and folders organized.

The All-Star Club

The All-Star Club is a club that all students in G13 have an opportunity to join! To be eligible to join the club, students must have at least three weeks of outstanding behavior and no missing or late work. Each week students have the chance to earn an “All-Star Coupon.” When a student has earned three coupons, he/she may join the All-Star Club. If at any time a student does not meet the behavior or academic expectations of the club, he/she will be dismissed from the club. At that time, the student can begin to earn three coupons to rejoin the club. The All-Star Club is an excellent way to reward students for meeting classroom expectations.

Homework and Agenda Books

Homework is an opportunity for students to practice skills/concepts that have been taught in class. Students will be assigned homework daily. Reading logs will be provided each Friday and due the following Friday. Students will also have math and/or ELA homework almost every night. Each student has a “math notebook” that contains important definitions, examples and other notes that will be helpful when completing homework. Please remind your child to bring it home each night. Students will also be assigned long-term projects throughout the year. Whenever a long-term project is assigned, very specific guidelines and due dates will be sent home for your review.

Except for the weekly reading log, we check homework daily. We will mark the homework with an “S” (satisfactory) for complete, neat homework that reflects effort and “U” (unsatisfactory) for incomplete homework that is not neat or reflects little effort. Consistent, satisfactory homework is one of the criteria for students to be a member of the “All-Star Club.”

Agendas are an important part of the home-school connection. Students should be taking their agendas and homework folders home each night and bringing them to school each day. Students are required to write assignments in the agendas daily. Please review your child’s agenda each night. We will make note of any missing assignments in their agenda. We will only sign agendas if a prior arrangement is made with you or if we identify a student who is not responsibly copying assignments or completing homework.

Reading Log

Independent reading is an important way for students to strengthen their reading skills; therefore, students will be assigned a weekly reading log to complete at home. Students will receive a log each Friday, and it is due the following Friday. Students need to read 4 out of the 5 times during the week. Each

time they must read a book on their AR reading level for at least 30 minutes. After reading the student needs to fill out the log, including a two or three sentence summary about what they read that night. Students also need to have a parent sign the log each night. Thank you for your support with this important weekly assignment.

Absences

When absent students return to school, they will find missing work on their desk. Students are responsible for asking us any questions that they may have about the assignments. They need to make up the missed work in a reasonable amount of time depending on the number of days that they were absent. Please send a note with a reason for your child’s absence so that we can forward it the office. If your child will be out for more than one day, please call or email one of us so that we can make arrangements to send work home.

If a student is absent from class due to band, chorus, guidance, early dismissal, or the nurse, they are responsible for checking to see what assignments they may have missed and completing them at home that evening.

ReadingELA (English Language Arts) will focus on the Common Core Standards. We will be reading a variety of novels this year in class to use as vehicles to teach essential skills and concepts. One of the shifts in CCSS is to provide students with more opportunities to work with nonfiction text. Throughout our novel studies, we will integrate nonfiction articles that connect to the novels. The students will be learning techniques and skills to help them understand how to read and comprehend a nonfiction article. Students will also be learning a school-wide strategy this year called ACE (Answer the question, Cite evidence, and Explain the evidence). This will help students develop skills to answer text-based questions. Students will be participating in a variety of engaging activities that also incorporate picture books, video clips, and collaborating with other fifth graders in the building and other schools!

Writing

Students will be writing as a tool for learning in all subjects every school day. However, a portion of our daily ELA time will be devoted to process writing. The writing process consists of the following steps: prewriting, writing a rough draft, conferencing with a peer and/or teacher, revising and editing, and publishing a final draft. Students will learn how to write informative, narrative, and argument-opinion pieces. Students will learn how to organize ideas into paragraphs and paragraphs into 3-5 paragraph essays that include an introduction and a conclusion. For many assignments they will be completing research using a variety of sources. They will receive writing/language skills instruction based on the Common Core Standards during mini-lessons throughout the week. These skills will then be applied to the writing assignment that students are completing in class. Students will also learn how to use Google Docs to "publish" their final drafts or create presentations.

Math

The fifth grade math program consists of a wide range of math concepts and skills based on the Common Core Standards in Mathematics. Our first unit focuses on a variety of activities that build students' number sense. We will begin the year by reviewing place value. Next, we will be using different strategies to strengthen our multiplication and division skills. We will then apply these skills to solve word problems. Being able to identify the operations needed to solve problems and learn how to work through multi-step problems will be our focus. Finally, students will learn the order of operations. Our other units of study this year will be volume, fractions, decimals, geometry, and algebra.

Basic Math Skills

Your child will be successful in math if he/she knows the basic math skills: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In fifth grade, we use these basic skills daily as we learn new skills and concepts. Students especially need to know their multiplication facts. If your child struggles with multiplication facts, please encourage them to practice these facts for 15 minutes several nights each week. There are a variety of websites available on the Math page of our class website or they can practice the “old fashioned” way by making flash cards.

Science

Students will be participating in a variety of high interest science activities and experiments. Our first science unit is Ecosystems. Our students will learn about ecosystems by building their own eco-columns from 2 liter soda bottles. Students will create an aquarium and a terrarium with live plants and animals. They will learn how these ecosystems depend on each other for plants and animals to survive and how pollution can affect these habitats. In our next unit students will learn about Mixtures and Solutions. Students will learn basic chemistry concepts throughout this unit. Our final unit will be Motion and Design. Students will learn basic concepts of physics by constructing vehicles using K-nex. Students will use their vehicles in experiments to learn about the effects of force, load and aerodynamics.

Social Studies

Our social studies curriculum focuses on American History. Students will learn civics, geography and economic concepts within the historical framework. Our first unit is on the Slavery and the Civil War. Students will begin the unit by working in small groups to learn about the slave economy in the South, slave codes, the Underground Railroad, and abolitionists. We will also visit a website that will give us an opportunity to learn about the Underground Railroad, read picture books and a narrative of a slave to understand the perspectives of slaves. Finally they will learn about the cause and effects of the Civil War. In our next unit, students will learn about the significance of inventions and inventors during the Industrial Revolution. Later in the year, students will learn about the Great Depression, and the significance of the Bill of Rights.