This week in math, we’ll complete our unit on dividing decimals and take our summative assessments for units 5 and 6. We will most likely review on Tuesday and then take the assessment on Wednesday and Friday. Students will MAP test on Tuesday and Thursday. In science, we’ll continue to investigate how we can determine what is in mixture when another scientists has created the mixture and not shared that knowledge with us. In SEL, we’ll start a unit on inclusion.
If you would like to volunteer in the classroom, please make sure to sign up for the next volunteer training session which is in January and linked above.
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student starts their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student starts their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
Please see the school Newsletter to keep up with all that is happening in our building this week: Newsletter
Field Trip
If you have not turned in your field trip form, please do so as soon as possible. This is a really fun field trip and I’d love all students to come. Those forms can be found here if you are unable to find them in your student’s backpack. https://msbinclass.com/forms/
Upcoming Events
Week of Altruismo – 11/13-11/17 – Flyer Below
Food Drive through 11/17 – Bring in non-perishable food items for the House Challenge
Field Trip Boelter – 11/20
Volunteer Trainings: 11/20
McTeacher Night – 12/6
No School – Fall Break – 11/22 – 11/24
Curriculum
This week, we finish up our unit on dividing whole numbers before entering a unit on dividing decimals. We’ll assess both of these units upon completi0n of the unit on dividing decimals just like we did for multiplying whole numbers and multiplying decimals. On Friday, I sent home student’s rubrics for their multiplying whole numbers and decimals assessments. You’ll notice two independent grades for those assessments. Please ask your student what they’re most proud of. Your students made a lot of growth during multiplication and I am really proud of that growth!
In science, we’ll be mixing it up with mixtures and solutions. This is a fun unit as students get to put their hands in experiments and truly understand the difference between mixtures and solutions.
In SEL, we’re continuing our unit on caring and working on making a sincere apology and understanding forgiveness.
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student starts their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student starts their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
Please see the school Newsletter to keep up with all that is happening in our building this week: Newsletter
Upcoming Events
11/10- No School – Veterans Day
Curriculum
This week, we’ll continue to understand what happens to large numbers when we divide them by one digit and two digit divisors into equal groups. That understanding includes what really happens logically with those remainders and how that equal division relates to our understanding of numbers. In science, we’ll venture into a unit on mixtures and solutions.
Don’t forget! No school this Friday for Veterans Day! I’m looking forward to another incredible week with your students. 🙂
Halloween is on Tuesday, and although we are not having an official party in class, I know that students love bringing goodies and sharing them with each other. If you are interested, you can send your child with candy on Tuesday to pass out to our Homeroom class (No nuts, please!). Please make sure the candy is store bought and sealed (no loose candy will be passed out due to sanitary issues). Also, please make sure there is enough for all students – we have 24 students in our class. We will pass those out at the end of the day. We also have a little bit of fun Halloween math planned!
Curriculum
This week, students will start a new division unit. On Thursday and Friday, we took our multiplying whole numbers and decimals summative assessment. This Friday, we will take a re-assessment that covers units 1-5, and unit 13 in math. This is one way we allow students to raise their prior assessment scores.
In science, we’re closing out our unit on Earth and Space and will take the assessment Wednesday-Thursday. We’re excited to close out this unit and move into Modeling Matter, which is always fun.
There will be a 5th Grade Presentation on Friday, November 3, 2023, at 9:30 am at Ober that all parents can attend. So many great things happen at these schools. I encourage all students to consider applying to attend.
For those who have inquired as to Yearbook Sales, please see the attached flyer to order a yearbook:
Thanks to all of the parents who were able to meet with us telephonically, via Google Meet, or in person to discuss your student’s academic progress. We love talking about the growth your student is making and being able to answer questions you may have about that progress.
We’re going to have a great week! If you have any questions about Halloween, please reach out!
Holy wow! We’re in the middle of October already. Time really does fly in 5th grade. We’ve learned so much already, and we will continue to pick up the pace as we venture toward the end of October. Our goal is to make sure your students are ready for middle school, and in order to do that, we must keep moving.
In science, we created a model of our constellation system. We will use these models to better understand what happens as our seasons change and our earth rotates. This will be our culminating project in a a very long unit, and we will take that summative assessment next week. The Earth and Sky unit is the longest unit in our curriculum and we are all ready to move into Modeling Matter.
In math this week, we finished up our unit on multiplying whole numbers. Students have used a variety of strategies to complete this work and check it for accuracy. Our discussions about strategies this week were centered around the students identifying which strategy was the most efficient strategy for them. We’ve moved headlong into our unit on multiplying decimals. Students will work through this unit to understand that when we multiply a whole number by a partial number, the whole number will always get smaller.
We will continue our unit on Caring this week as well. We’ve identified multiple forms of communication including passive, aggressive, and assertive communication. We will work to gain a better understanding of these types of communication before moving into apologies. The unit on apologies will also include a summative health grade.
We were able to schedule our next Student/Parent/Teacher Conference date for 10/23. We will send out sign ups for Monday, October 23, this week. Thanks for your understanding and patience in allowing us to plan for that additional day.
This week will be exceptional because I am lucky enough to teach the exceptional kids you send to me. Thank you for your continued support. It means everything to us!
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
Please see the school Newsletter to keep up with all that is happening in our building this week: Newsletter
Upcoming Events
10/9 – No School Staff Development Day
10/10 – Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences
10/11 – NO Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences These will be rescheduled for a future date. We will share that date once we have subs scheduled.
10/12 Volunteer training day.
Curriculum
This week, we will complete our unit on multiplying whole numbers before taking that knowledge and applying it to multiplying decimals. In science, we will extend our understanding of earth and sky and apply it to understanding the earth’s orbit through modeling.
This will be a shorter week for students, but we have a lot of learning planned for those three days. Thank you so much for your continued support. Please reach out if you have any questions!
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
Please see the school Newsletter to keep up with all that is happening in our building this week: Newsletter
Upcoming Events
10/2 – Week of Respect
10/4 – Last day to reserve a slot for Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences
10/9 – No School Staff Development Day
10/10 – Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences
10/11 – Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences
Week of Respect Dress Up Days
Conferences
Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences sign ups have gone out! If you have not already done so, please click here to sign up. The last day to sign up will be Wednesday, the 4th. You will receive confirmations from us on the 5th and 6th. Students will be leading the conferences, so we do want them with us for this meeting. If you’ve not signed up by Wednesday, we’ll be calling and sending out Dojo messages. Meeting with you and your student is really important to us.
Curriculum
This week, we finished our unit on adding and subtracting decimals. I met with students to talk about how they felt about their progress through this unit. Next week, students will bring home their self reflection including their Proud Moments and Areas for Growth. Monday, we will started our multiplication unit. By the end of the unit, students should be able to use the most efficient strategy to multiply multidigit numbers by multidigit numbers. Strategies will include box method and standard algorithm. Our goal is that students have a conceptual understanding of what happens when we multiply something five times or 257 times. Practice makes us more proficient! I will send home which workbook pages students can do at home to become more proficient if you’d like to have them complete additional practice.
In science, we completed a unit on why the sun is up sometimes, but not all the time. This week, we’ll expand our knowledge of earth on sky and learn why we see different stars at different times of the year. We also continued to work on our ecosystems coding unit, and we were able to see what really happens when we fish too much, or when we have too much algae in an ecosystem.
Thanks for another great week with great kids. They really are amazing!
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
Please see the school Newsletter to keep up with all that is happening in our building this week: Newsletter
Upcoming Events
Sunday, September 23, 7:55 live landing of OSIRIS-REx
Thursday September 28 – Ober Fun Run
Friday, September 29 – Rock Your School Day
Curriculum
REMINDER – OSIRIS-REx lands at 7:55 AM tomorrow. We’ve really enjoyed tying this historical mission to our curriculum in science. I’d love for you to watch that landing at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range with your students live tomorrow morning. Here’s a PBS article which includes a live link for the landing in Utah: PBS News
In math this week, we completed our Topic 1 Assessment on place value and understanding decimals and fractions. We also started a unit on adding and subtracting decimals. We make sure students understand what’s happening conceptually with those numbers by using base ten blocks to model those operations. Mathigon (Link here) has great tools for students to continue to use these models outside the classroom.
We will complete this unit this week and then move into a unit on multiplying whole numbers. Students need repeated practice when multiplying whole numbers, as we culminate by multiplying 3 digits by 3 digits at unit’s end. I’d love for students to work on this at home as well. Extra practice is easy to find in Topic 3 in their math workbooks. If you’re unable to locate your student’s math workbook, please reach out! I’m happy to send another home. 🙂
In our SEL lesson, we’ll focus on rumors and gossip in a unit on caring. We usually teach this unit around this time as this is when rumors and gossip tend to pop up in our fifth grade year. Please communicate to your students that it is really important to reach out to a trusted adult when they find themselves in these conversations or subjects of these conversations.
I also made a fundraising challenge to all of the other classes in our school. I think we can raise more money than any other class for the fun run! I will let kids brainstorm ideas for a class reward if we meet our goal. It could get interesting!
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
Please see the school Newsletter to keep up with all that is happening in our building this week: Newsletter
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, September 19 – Talk Like a Pirate Day
Thursday, September 28 – Ober Fun Run
Friday, September 29 – Rock Your School Day
Curriculum
Next week we will move into a unit on adding and subtracting decimals in math. First, we will work on estimating to make sure our final answer makes sense. Then we’ll work to model adding and subtracting decimals so that we truly understand what’s happening with the place value as we add and subtract those values. Finally, we’ll work to efficiently add and subtract decimals. Here’s a video that walks through efficiency when we are adding and subtracting decimals.
If you’d like your student to complete extra practice. We’ll work on the lessons 2.1-2.4 as designated in the digital planner.
In science, we will work on unit 2, which helps us to better observe and understand patterns in space. Don’t forget! OSIRIS-REx lands on September 24. Please watch that landing with your students if possible. You can stay up to date here: https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex. I can’t wait to see what songs your family has come up with for that NASA playlist. We’ll put together a class playlist next week. Remember you can submit your songs here: https://thirdrockradio.net/osiris-special/
Our SEL lesson this week will continue to focus on respect. We’ve talked about respecting ourselves, others, and property around us. On Friday, we’ll do a little more coding on our ecosystem project.
Thanks for all of your support. I’m looking forward to another great week!
Boelter/Caskie AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Ms. Boelter in the morning): Boelter Caskie Digital Planner
Caskie/Boelter AM Digital Planner (if your student start their day with Mrs. Caskie in the morning): Caskie Boelter Digital Planner
This week, we continued to get learn and model why we can see some stars quite well, but other stars and constellations are more difficult to see. We started coding on an ecosystem model. And, in math, we dove deeper into place value, decimals, and comparing decimals, fractions, and multiples of 10.
Next week we will complete our unit on place value in math. We will take the unit assessment on Friday, as indicated on the digital planner. In science, we will complete our first unit on understanding stars and constellations before we move into a unit on observing patterns in space.
Your students were amazing this week. We had so many students earning lunch in the classroom and free time because they were doing the right thing, even when no one was looking. Thanks for sharing your amazing kids with me!
Ms. B. in Class 