Our Week in Fifth Grade- 12-6-19
We hope that everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving break. We are thankful for getting to spend our days with each of your students. Read on to find out what we have been learning in fifth grade.
Humanities:
The students have continued working on their research essays. After taking notes from a variety of online and print sources, they learned how to organize the notes into categories which translated to the body paragraphs of their essays. Once the notes were in categories, we worked on writing an introductory paragraph beginning with a hook, followed by background information, and ending with a thesis statement. The students spent this week writing the body paragraphs, peer editing, and making final revisions to their essay in advance of our Conference on Civilizations next week.
During reading time, we continued Wonder. There was an eruption of applause in the room when we learned that Jack Will and Auggie mended their relationship and became friends again. Now there is a war among the fifth grades centered on Jack and Julian. We also met a new character, Justin, who is Via’s boyfriend. This week we will read from his point of view. In response to the reading that we have been doing, we will have a class discussion where each student must take a side and explain why they chose their position. Some of the questions we will be pondering are: “Is Julian’s mom a good or bad parent in your opinion?” “Should Jack Will have been expelled for punching Julian?” and “Does everyone need to be friends with everyone else in fifth grade?”
Judaics:
This week we finished our first Chumash unit, ending with Joseph’s two dreams. We used Instagram templates to show the elements of his dream and think about the reactions of people who saw his “post”. Students did a great job labeling the dream with the Torah text and rooting their creative responses to the post in what they knew about the character’s responses in the text.