5TH GRADE NEWS

MATH AND SCIENCE:

Moving Right Along

The fifth grade students successfully completed their grade-level math standards well ahead of schedule, so we moved forward into sixth grade content. Here we extended our understanding of area of familiar shapes such as rectangles to derive the formula for the area of all parallelograms. We came to this conclusion through deep mathematical discourse and a great deal of hands-on analysis.

LANGUAGE ARTS AND HISTORY:

April is National Poetry month, and thus, it is the perfect time to study poetry. Poetry is an art, a form of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings both figuratively and literally. The most wonderful aspect about poetry is the freedom it offers. It is essential for students to study and write poems that contain a specific format, but it’s equally as important to encourage students to write about topics they love in any way they like.

Fifth grade has learned a variety of poetic formats so far-- from free verse list poems to haikus. This week, we are studying similes, practicing writing our own before writing a simile poem. I encouraged students to create original similes and invited them to share with the rest of the class. Another aspect of poetry-- it’s meant to be shared, read aloud, and celebrated!

By the way, Z. is wearing the Mr. Brilliant crown in the first photo because he made brilliant connections identifying metaphors, similes, and personification.