There are a lot of exciting things happening in our class room these days and a few important upcoming announcements. Next week our class will be attending a field trip to Mission Trails Regional Park. There we will learn about 4 distinct ecosystems. We will be leaving on the morning of Wednesday, October 28th. We will return by early dismissal that day so we will not be eating lunch there. I imagine that we will need a snack and water at the very least so be sure to pack something to munch on. Also don’t forget to wear closed toe shoes and bring plenty of sunscreen and perhaps a hat.
Our class has begun working on our writing program that I went to training for a few weeks ago. I can already see that writing fluency has increased dramatically in the short time that the program has been implemented. We are working on creating powerful sentences and identifying key writing standards for fifth grade narratives. Ask your child about sentence “travelers, double whos”, and “triple deckers.”
For math we are continuing to work on place value for decimals and comparing them to percentages. We do this in a variety of different ways. Sometimes we play games to learn at other times we use independent skill sheets. We are also having daily multiplication skills to make sure that we have our basic facts in order to move on to more difficult concepts.
For our project right now we a focusing on the History of the American Revolutionary War. I decided that we are going to focus on social studies for our project time. After this project we will then switch to our ecosystems project.

Greetings from Bill’s class,
This week we continued to progress on our “Me projects.” We toiled over our family trees and learned about our family history. We set some due dates so we could be motivated to finish up the project. There are a few of us that are almost done, congratulations! This week on Wednesday we had our first substitute, Amy. Bill was diligently working at a conference learning how to better teach writing. Kim has taken the class and has had great results.
Don’t forget that tonight Justin’s class is hosting the breakfast for dinner. This is all going down at 5:30. The cost is 3 dollars for a single serving of 1 pancake, 1 sausage, 1 fruit, and o.j. After parents are welcome to come in to the classrooms and see their child’s work. Also, don’t forget that Friday is pizza day, so don’t forget your $3.75.

This week was a blast! We have been continuing to work on our “me projects”. We are almost finished with our personal artifacts essays. Today we made a pie graph representing ourselves with percentages and decimals. It was 100% fun, so much in fact, that we did not want to stop the activity. For math this week we learned expanded form, word form, and standard form. We also learned about place value. We practiced these skills by playing a memory game. We learned greater than and less than by rolling the dice.
This week we started our first class council to discuss issues that arise during the day. We have discussed whether or not to allow ipods during independent work time and if we want a class pet.
This week we started puppetry and breathing classes. We started making our own shadow puppets with different types of animals and people. During breathing and relaxation we had to relax and focus on our breath. We also did spider movements.
We finished our first read aloud, The Rats of Nimh. We are going to watch the movie and compare it to the book. We are going to start reading Because of Winn-Dixie next.
Just a reminder Chinese classes are starting next Wednesday after school, so if you would like to enroll talk to Donna. Also don’t forget that picture day is on Tuesday so please bring in your forms as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Bill’s class