TCE 5th Grade: Week of October 21

Hi everyone! Thank you for visiting our blog. During conferences, we got some great feedback from you about the blog! In an effort to make things easier to find, we've created more headings for the sections.

The order of the blog is:

Important Reminders & Announcements
Sky Ranch Updates
Curriculum Updates & Discussion Topics
Optional Homework & Resources for Review
Upcoming Events & Dates
Highlights from the Week (with pictures)

A few other reminders about the blog:

There's a Google Calendar embedded at the top with important dates.
If you prefer to read this blog in another language, you can use the translate widget at the bottom.
You can also use the labels on the side to search for specific topics.

Thank you for taking the time to read this communication each week! We appreciate it.

Author's Visit Rescheduled

The Author's Visit with Elly Swartz has been rescheduled for sometime in the spring. If your son/daughter purchased a book, they can still get their copy in the spring.

TCE Pumpkin Patch

5th Grade Spelling Bee

We talked to all of the fifth graders about our Class and School Spelling Bees in class this week. Every year, the fifth grade has a School Spelling Bee. Prior to the School Bee, we have Class Bees, which are open to any student that wants to participate and serves as the "qualifier" for the School Bee. Your son/daughter received a letter explaining the School Bee in class today. We also discussed this presentation with includes more specifics about the bees.

We are not allowed to post any study lists online. However, we distributed those in class, and we are happy to send home extra copies if you'd like. We will include some addition study resources in the "Option Homework and Review Resources" section of the blog below.

Accessing Your Son/Daughter's Schoology

As we shared at Curriculum Night, Schoology is a great resource to use to learn more about what we are doing in class. If you login to your son/daughter's account (or ask them to login and show you), you'll be able to see resources added by teachers, assignments, pretests and quizzes, and discussions. Each of us uses Schoology differently, but it would be beneficial for each class of parents to visit from time to time. If you'd like to access your own account (rather than logging in as your child), you can use this site to learn more about how to do it.

Red Ribbon Week

This information was also included in Ms. Martin's Parent Blog this week:

Next week is Red Ribbon Week at Town Center Elementary. Red Ribbon Week is an alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention awareness campaign observed annually in October in the United States. This year's motto is, "Send a Message. Stay Drug Free."

Our TCE Student Council has designated a dress up theme each day to help get kids involved and keep it at the forefront of their minds for the week as we continue to encourage our kids to make smart, healthy choices.

Please refer to the attached graphic to see our dress up themes for each day. These are optional, but we'd love for our students to join in!

In 5th grade, we'll be including some opportunities for the students to earn House Points by dressing up for these spirit days!

See the graphic about Spirit Days below:

2019-2020 Creative Writing Competition

It's time for the 2019-2020 Creative Writing Competition sponsored by the Coppell Gifted Association. This will be the 12th year CGA has run this competition, and we'd love to have our 4th and 5th graders participate. Please see below for the link to register and important details:

FREE for Coppell ISD to students to enter.
Open to any student in grades 4-12
Students do not have to be part of the gifted program to participate in the competition
Deadline for submissions: December 6, 2019
Details and Rules at https://coppellgifted.org/2019-2020-creative-writing-competition/

KTEX Spotlight

The 5th graders in the KTEX Productions & KTEX Editing Club produce our Daily Announcements show called KTEX. On Fridays, we put on a longer show with extra segments such as Jokes, Weather, Sports, and a Global Goals Update. The learners write the script and run all of the equipment! We thought you might enjoy seeing the Friday Show each week. Click here to see the Friday Show from Friday, October 4th.

As you know, we have a payment plan for our Sky Ranch trip. You can view the information letter here. The second payment of $50 is due Friday, November 1st. You may pay by cash, check, or online via this link. Please contact your homeroom teacher or Mrs. Ford, the Assistant Principal, if you would like to discuss payment plans.

Math
In math next week, we are wrapping up our unit over Decimal Operations with a post-assessment. Then, we start out next unit, Personal Finance. Our focus questions for this unit are: "What makes a good financial decision?" and "Why is budgeting important?"

Science
In science next week, we will continue exploring the different types of energy, including mechanical, electrical, light, thermal, and sound. The students are using the Apple app, Numbers, to keep track of their progression of learning in their "Energy Workflow."

Reading
In reading, we just started Unit 2: Moving Up Levels of Nonfiction. In this unit, we'll be focusing on identifying main ideas and supporting details in the text, analyzing author's craft, making inferences, comparing and contrasting, and analyzing the effect of text structure on the author's purpose. This week we will focus specifically on using text features to preview our books and strategies for determining main ideas in a text.

We'd love for you to talk to your son/daughter about nonfiction texts. What topics are they reading about in class? What big ideas have they found in their books so far?

Writing
In writing, we just started our informational unit! We have already been blown away by the writing they did on their preassessments. This week we'll focus on writing to teach. Our writers will practice planning their writing by answering "who, what, when, where, and why" in their informational books.

We'd love for you to talk to your son/daughter about the topic he/she chose to write about for the first book of this unit!

Social Studies
Last week, we learned all about the Declaration of Independence. This week, we will dive into the American Revolution. We'll also learn a tidbit about the Star Spangled Banner and Paul Revere's Ride.

As a reminder, all of the activities listed below are optional resources for you and your family.

Math
For our optional weekly homework this week, we have a fraction review to practice the standards they learned last year. Click here for the link.

Reading & Language Arts
We would love for your son/daughter to spend time reading at home! They can read any text that catches their interest. We are currently at the beginning of our Nonfiction Unit, so any informational texts they are interested in would be great.

Here are a couple of websites that offer current event articles targeted towards preteens and teens. With your guidance, they could choose articles of interest to read.

If you would like some extra resources to help your son/daughter study for the Class and School Spelling Bees, you can use these sites:

My Spell It
Word Central Games (Alpha-bot or Robo-Bee)
For Fun: Could you win the Spelling Bee?

Another great way to help your son/daughter prepare for the spelling bees is to help them practice spelling words aloud. We suggest practicing in front of the mirror.

Your son/daughter can also work on an entry for the CGA writing competition. (See information above)