Life in Grade Five and Six March 12-16

Hello all,

I hope everyone is ready for a sunny weekend!

In Grade Five Social Studies this week we began a lesson on the conflict and cooperation between English settlers and Native American people.  The students are in three groups, each with their own reading packet.  Each reading packet is a different set of primary and secondary sources based on a colony in Colonial North America.  This week students read the packet, discussed the main ideas, and have been working together to answer the set of included questions.  Next week the Grade Fives will finalize their answers and  begin to formulate a project to present their information to the other two groups.

In  Language Arts the  Grade Fives wrapped up and reviewed our latest reading, "Michelle Kwan: Heart of a Champion".  Today (Friday) the grade fives wrote a Comprehension Quiz on the reading that assessed the reading skills Main Idea and Details,  and Making Inferences.  Next week we will begin the writing process to write a personal essay, and start reading "La Bamba".  A story about about a boy who goes against his fear of the stage by signing up the school talent show.

The grade Fives will also be assigned an extension project for the novel "Two Weeks with the Queen" that we have just finished reading.

In Grade Six we have been working on our first draft of an heroic epic.. This is a cross curricular task that has been inspired by our learning about The Epic of Gilgamesh in Social Studies.  Grade Sixes are using their knowledge of the writing process from Language Arts to write their own epic.  We have also looked at text organization, transitive verbs, being verbs, linking verbs, suffixes, and pronunciation of vowel combinations.

This week in Social Studies we have looked at the Mesopotamian Empires of Babylon, Akkad, and Assyria.  The Grade sixes have evaluated the success and failures of the various leaders.  Most importantly we discussed the importance of Hammurabi's Code.  Next week we will continue to look at Hammurabi's code in more depth, and complete an assignment summarizing it's importance and it's effect on the modern world.

Ways you can help your Grade Five and Six Student

Grade Five

• Remind them to finish the readings in their Social Studies packet.  Please have them answer the questions in complete sentences.  Answers should be a minimum of three sentences long.
• Make sure your son or daughter is reading a novel of their choice in English.

Grade Six

• Please check in with your son or daughter and have them read a loud the first draft of their heroic epic, and if they have had a writing conference with me they will need to do the required revisions.
• Grade six students need to do a video of search of YouTube this weekend for videos on Hammurabi's Code. They need to  watch and make a playlist of the videos that they find helpful to explain the importance of the code.

Enjoy your weekend!

Patrick Holt