April Updates

M-STEP

M-STEP is up an running.  Our class finished the English Language Arts Computer Adaptive test last Tuesday.  We completed the English Language Arts Performance Task last Wednesday.  Our students worked extremely hard during these two days of testing.  We will be taking the Social Studies M-STEP on Tuesday and Thursday this week.  Please make sure your child is to school on time, well rested, and has eaten a healthy breakfast.  Thank you for your support.

Upcoming Events

WLE Science Night

Season of Nonviolence

WLE Spring Fair Basket

Dear Families,

For our WLE Spring Fair that is being held on Friday, May 5^th each classroom is creating a theme basket to be raffled off.  Our class basket is Summer Fun.  Think of any and all the fun things one would need to enjoy the summer.  This could include but is not limited to: outdoor toys, crafts, books, sports items, coloring books, etc.

Please consider bringing in one or more items that goes along with our summer fun theme to go into the basket.  Be creative!  If you would rather give a monetary donation to go toward the items, that would be fine.  All items must be turned into the classroom by Thursday, April 27^th.  

The PTA will be providing the actual basket and wrapping.  Raffle tickets will be sold the day of the fair, and drawings for the baskets will be held at the end of the fair. 

Thank you so much for your continued support!

Mrs. Faley and Mrs. Athan

APRIL SHOWERS BRING SPRING FLOWERS FOR SALE

Last week, you received an order form about the Spring Flower Sale. You can purchase beautiful hanging baskets, flats of marigolds, snapdragons and other beautiful annuals.

All proceeds to benefit the WLE Beautification Committee. This committee is looking to freshen up and update our school hallways, bathrooms and common spaces.

March Updates

It is a busy time of year in 5th grade.  Below are some updates for you and your fifth grader.

Middle School Course Selections

The counselor from Sarah Banks Middle School came to Walled Lake Elementary on Friday to talk to our fifth graders about scheduling classes for next school year.  Yes!  We are actually scheduling for middle school already.  Your fifth grader brought home a course selection sheet with directions.  Please go over this sheet with your child and help them to select the courses he or she would like.  All courses need to be selected in Skyward Family Access and on the paper form.  Please make sure all of the steps are complete by Tuesday, March 28th.  If you need assistance with your Family Access Login, please let me know as soon as possible.

There is a Sarah Banks Parent Orientation on Thursday, March 23rd.  Please consider attending this orientation to help your child transition to middle school.

Spring Pictures

Spring pictures were sent home March 7th.  Spring pictures work a little differently than fall pictures.  Here is what you need to know:

-If you do not want to purchase pictures, just send all of the uncut pictures back to school.

-If you want to purchase pictures, great.  Keep the ones you want and return UNCUT pages and payment back to school.  You only pay for what you keep.

-They DO NOT do retakes for Spring pictures.

-The Fall picture will be the picture in the yearbook.

If you do not wish to purchase pictures, please return your uncut pictures as soon as possible.

Report Cards

Report cards will be available on Skyward Family Access after 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 22nd.  Please go over your child's report card.  Talk to your child about his or her progress.  Praise his or her hard work and set goals with your child. If you have any questions, please let us know.  We are happy to talk with you about your child's progress this year.

Charity Volleyball Game

Tuesday, March 21st

6:30 p.m.

Geisler Middle School

Come cheer us on as we play our annual charity Volleyball Game this Tuesday, March 21 at 6:30 at Geisler Middle School. This year, we are partnering to support Team Joseph. Students are encouraged to bring their donation boxes to the game! The class with the highest attendance at the game wins a pizza party! It's not too late to drop off donations of individual sized snakcs like crackers, pretzels, chips and water bottles. All proceeds benefit Team Joseph! Last year, we raised $2,975! Can we beat our record? Go Tigers!

Laugh Factory

We had a fun assembly on Thursday.  The Laugh Factory came and entertained us for an hour.  There were many little laughing faces on Thursday afternoon.  Our own Tyler was called up to help with a little trick. 

February 3rd

Brrrr!  The winter is back.  The playground has been cold.  Please remember to send your child with appropriate winter gear each day.

Blog Layout Change
In an effort to make our blog more user-friendly, we put the important dates listed on the right hand side.  If something important is coming up you will find it in the top right part of the blog page.  Please check this section regularly for important dates.

In the Classroom

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop this week, we shifted our focus to nonfiction text.  We are going to spend sometime working with nonfiction text. We will focus on the following over the next week: 

• previewing the text and text structures

• asking, how is this organized? What are the different parts?
• studying the physical layout of the whole text

• paying close attention to expository text features

• titles and subtitles
• table of contents, diagrams, charts, graphic organizers, photos, and captions

• activating prior knowledge of the topic by thinking, What do I already know about the topic?

During this upcoming week we will be looking at different text structures. We will be studying descriptive text along with cause and effect.

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop this week we worked chronological order. We took information from a nonfiction text and put it in order. During the upcoming week we will work on using the text structures we study in Readers' Workshop and applying them ourselves in Writers' Workshop. We will also be working on summary writing. We will research informational topics and take the information we learn to write a summary.

Social Studies

In Social Studies this week, we continued to study the events leading to the American Revolution. This week we focused on The Sugar Act, Quartering Act, Stamp Act, and Townshend Acts. Ask your 5th grader what they learned about these events. The students were very interested in the effects of these acts. The ways in which the colonists reacted. The students really enjoyed incorporating some drama into our lessons this week. They love acting!

Math

In Math this week we continued to work with fractions. We worked on addition of fractions and finding common denominators. We also worked on adding and subtracting mixed numbers. We ended the week by looking at "fraction of" problems and how they connect to multiplication. This coming week we will move into multiplication of fractions. We will do this traditionally and using an area model. Please make sure that your child is doing his or her math homework every night. These homework assignments should not take long and your child should be able to do them independently.

Upcoming Events

BIRTHDAY IN A BAG - The WLE Girl Scouts are collecting items to make a child's birthday extra special.  All items will be collected from February 20-March 10th.  They are looking for things like - cake mix, canned icing, sprinkles, balloons, festive birthday plates, candles, etc.  See the flyer attached for more information.

2017

We have been busy getting back to work after our break.  We spent some time getting back into our routines and sharing about our break.  

Readers' and Writers' Workshop
We continue to work on our unit on opinion writing.  During Readers' Workshop we have been reading articles and watching videos on our topics.  Then during Writers' Workshop we have been working on writing a 5 paragraph opinion essay.  In our essay we have been working on using evidence from the text we read to support our opinions.  

Math
In math we continue to work on decimal concepts and coordinate grids.  Please continue to do the homelinks at home each night.

Social Studies
In Social Studies we are finishing up our unit on the original colonies.  Ask your 5th grader about the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies.  We will have our Social Studies BA on Thursday, January 19th.

Important Dates

Jan 9: PTA Meeting @ 7:00 P.M.

Jan 16: NO SCHOOL- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

WLCSD Martin Luther King Celebration Event @ WL Northern from 5:00-8:00

Jan 17: Field Trip to WLW

Jan 27: Talent Show for students

Feb 1: HALF DAY OF SCHOOL, Students dismissed @ 12:09

Feb 2: PTA Pancake Supper 5:30-7:00

Feb 6: PTA Meeting @ 7:00 P.M.

Feb 7: Preschool Open House 5:00-6:30 P.M.

Feb 8: Count Day

Feb 16: HALF DAY OF SCHOOL, students dismissed @ 12:09 for Mid Winter Break

Feb 17: MID WINTER BREAK-NO SCHOOL

Feb 20: MID WINTER_ NO SCHOOL

Feb 21: NO SCHOOL

Feb 22: BACK TO SCHOOL

BREAKOUT EDU

December 15th

Wow!  Can you believe that it is the middle of December already?  Please read below to see what we have been working on in the classroom over the past couple weeks.

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have been working on formulating claims about our characters and providing reasons and evidence to support our claims.  We have been stating a claim, giving reasons for our claim and then providing evidence from the text to support our reasons.  The students are doing a great job of finding evidence to support their thinking.  We have been using our read aloud Fish in a Tree to state our claims about characters. This is now transferring into our opinion writing. 

Writers' Workshop

In writers' workshop we are working on writing opinion essays.  The students are reading about issues and then formulating their opinion. We are using multiple sources to provide reasons and evidence to support our opinions.  Our essays have a strong lead or hook paragraph, three reasons with evidence in the body, and then a closing with an echo.  Each week we will be tackling a different topic to write about. This week we are researching on rats and our question is "Does rats make good pets?"  Sorry if you child gets the idea that they need a pet rat at home.  

Today we focused on our hook.  How are we going to hook our readers to make them want to read our opinion piece?  We could do this by painting a picture, asking a question, giving background information, or sharing some statistics.  Then we wrote our lead with a hook, a claim, and a list of our reasons.  We have some amazing writers in our classroom.

Math

In Math we finished our unit on fractions.  Today we took our Unit 3 BA.  We had a lot of questions during the BA.  The BA results will be posted on Family Access by the end of the day Friday.  Please talk to your child and ask what was easy for them on the assessment and what was challenging.  We will send home the BA when everyone has had a chance to finish.

Social Studies

We finished our first unit on The First Americans and European Exploration.  To prepare for our first Social Studies BA we played a game called Kahoot (see pictures below).  Kahoot is a game where students answer multiple choice questions on their device and play against one another.  We had a lot of fun studying together.

We have now started our second unit on Colonial Life.  We have been studying the push and pull many people faced as they moved to the new world.  

Winter Party

On Thursday (12/22) around 1:45, we will be begin our Holiday Party.  We will be watching the Polar Express!! Around 2:30, we are going to break for a snack.  Students can bring something to drink from home. Please consider sending something with a lid.  Then we will continue the movie for the remainder of the afternoon. 

Important Reminders and Dates

• Permission Slips: Please return permission slips for our trip to Walled Lake Western if you have not done so already
• PTA:Please consider joining the PTA we currently only have a couple families that have joined.  You do not need to attend the meetings.  You can send in the PTA form with your small membership fee.
• December 22nd: Winter Party
• December 22nd - January 3rd: Winter Break

News Crew

Calling All 4th and 5th Graders Interested in NEWS CREW

Please click on the link below to apply for a WLE TV News Crew job, if you are interested.   Applications are due December 14th!  Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Mrs. McDonald

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSep7lgxYZBhjdo58lI_whOBYbx-hGNT9ZecE117Vlv4RSISJQ/viewform

November 11th

Blog written by the students in room 14.

We have had a productive week of working together in room 14.  We spent some time working on understanding differences and respecting each other opinions. We learned that we can have friends that do not share the same opinions and views.  We all come from different backgrounds and experiences.  We understand the importance of respecting one another.

Read below to see what room 14 has been working on this week.

Readers' Workshop
By: Alex, Roman, Jordyn, Iker, and Damien
In Readers' Workshop this week we have been working on SWBST.  This stands for somebody, wanted, but, so, then/theme.  This strategy helps us to retell or write a summary of stories we read. We are going to use these summaries to help us write realistic fiction stories of our own.

Writers' Workshop
In Writers' Workshop we have been writing realistic fiction stories.  We have been working on thinking about the setting of our stories and how the setting can affect the characters.  We also learned that authors spend a lot of time researching before writing.  We spent some time researching caves so we could develop a strong setting.

Math
By: Karlee, Caden, Landon, and Carlina
In math we finished unit 2.  We spent some time reviewing to prepare for the upcoming BA.  We reviewed 4 digit by 2 digit traditional division.  We also worked on checking our work by using the inverse operation.