Homework Tonight!
All students will be given homework tonight!

1. Math - “Is Every Square a Rectangle? Is Every Rectangle a Square?” 20 words for each part, or more.
2. Writing - “Writing Prompt: Footprints in the Sand” 50 words or more.

Early Release Tomorrow! Dismissal is at 12:10
Teachers will continue to work on curriculum coordination and development. We are making sure that our work together as teachers serves your children in a high-quality, challenging, and viable manner.

Emergency Information Form
Please review the information on the form provided. Make any changes necessary, and return it to school as soon as possible. Fill in any missing information. In the event of an emergency or disaster situation, we want to know how to contact you right away.

Parent Conferences - November 15, 16, 19, 20!

Thanks for all the great participation at our Open House event. It was nice to meet the families and relatives of our wonderful students! Our next time to visit will be important for understanding where your child is in their progress in 5th grade. We will have information from several sources to share with you. The information will be used for goal-setting and getting a good idea about what is ahead for the remainder of the school year. It is very important for us to know that we will work at your child’s goals as a team. We can customize class work as well as homework. At the core of all our work is achieving the state standards this year in math, reading, and science.

If you have not signed up for parent conference yet, please call the elementary school office (732-4471 x237) to arrange a conference time. Mr. Raymond and Mrs. Glessing will meet with all parents. Mr. Raymond will cover math and science. Mrs. Glessing will cover reading and language arts. They will review social studies together. We look forward to seeing you at your child’s conference!

Early Release Tomorrow!
School will let out early tomorrow at 12:10. Teachers will be involved in staff meetings to improve instruction. We will be analyzing test data and be working together to deliver a more effective education program. We want to see our success rates improve!

Open House Thursday!
Our annual Open House is Thursday, October 18, at 6pm to 7pm. We invite you to come and visit our classrooms and see our learning environment. At this time, we will have parent conference sign-ups. Parent conferences are November 15, 16, 19, and 20. Mrs. Glessing and Mr. Raymond will meet with all parents. Students are encouraged to attend their own conference. We will be reviewing past performance, current work, and future goals.

Fund-raising Efforts
The fifth grade is beginning a fund-raising program mainly for field trips. Other possible goals are increasing the usable technology available in our classrooms, and out-of-the ordinary classroom supplies.

We need parent help on Fridays, 11am to 1pm, and at the Fall Carnival this Saturday, 4pm to 8pm. We need help popping popcorn and getting it to customers who have paid for it. Students will be eating their popcorn at lunchtime. 5th grade students will also be helping since it will benefit them, and will also encourage their leadership for the rest of our school.

Picture Day Tomorrow!
Students can still bring money for pictures tomorrow!

Just Right Reading
Every other day we will have students reading “just right books” for about 30 minutes. These books should match up to their level as determined by our assessments. It’s important for children to read high-interest, on-level books to experience success in reading.

Homework Help
The Jefferson County Library is offering a “Homework Spot” on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30 to 4:30. If you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity for your child, make sure they bring a note to school to ride a different bus, if that is the plan you decide on. This is a free program. If you’d like to have us make sure your student has homework to work on every time we offer it, please let us know so we can assist you getting homework into your child’s hands.

Early Release on Wednesday, October 10.
School will be dismissed at 12:10 on Wednesday. Teachers will be working together on curriculum development issues and the improvement of instruction. We appreciate your flexibility!

Math Homework Last Night

Last night, most students were working on identifying the factors of a number. Factors are numbers that are multiplied by another number to get a product. We have been determining the difference between factors and multiples. Both are important to know for working with story problems and fractions.

A multiple is a number that is found by multiplying any number by a whole number. For example; 12 is a multiple of 4 because 4 x 3 is 12. 12 is also a multiple of 6 because 6 x 2 is 12. A multiple of a number is the number itself, and every other number larger than itself when the number is multiplied by a whole number.

Factors of a number are always 1, the number itself, and those numbers between 1 and the number that can be multiplied to get the number. For example; 7 is a factor of 14 because when 7 is multiplied by 2 the result is 14. 2 is also a factor.

Language Arts Homework Last Night

Students had the choice to write about an eagle or a horse. This work was an opportunity for students to use their senses and to describe the actions of familiar animals. Students are expected to use good capitalization, proper punctuation, and creative word choice describing actions and the setting. Surprisingly, many students still do not capitalize the letter I when it is used as a word. Please watch for this, and feel free to correct your child’s work.

Recognition Assembly
We all attended an assembly recognizing students for reaching the state standard on all of their WASL tests last year. We enjoyed the large number of students that did so well, and look forward to excellent results this coming year.

No homework tonight!

PTSA Meeting - Tuesday, October 2nd at 6:30 in the Library! Hope you can make it!

A big thanks goes to Mr. Raymond for teaching ALL the students today! I was able to spend my day assessing the students in reading. The DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) will provide me with many clues as to what each child will need my help with this year. I am looking forward to sharing these results with you during parent-teacher conferences.

Sign ups for parent-teacher conferences will be available at Open House. Our Open House at the elementary school is on October 18th from 6:00-7:00 pm. We look forward to seeing you and sharing some of the fantastic work your child has completed so far in the 5th grade!

No homework for the weekend!

Band and Reading

Learning to play a band instrument takes a lot of practice. Your student should be bringing home their instrument every day to practice for 20 minutes. At this point, they should be practicing their fingerings for different notes even if they can’t make a sound. But, they should be working toward making a consistent, controlled sound with their mouthpiece. Their band book should be in their backpack all the time. There is a lot of guidance in the book about how to form the mouth and lips and all the fingerings for the different notes.

Also, on the inside front cover, there is a practice record. This should be filled out as practice occurs. So, as for band, there is an expectation that there should be 100 minutes of practice a week.

Reading - Students should be reading widely at home. One of the goals we have at school is to read many different kinds of materials. When asked students should be able to tell what they’ve been reading; newspapers to mysteries to brochures to directions to recipes. They are all important and you can help us by guiding your student to read from a wide array of materials. They should bring it to school to show us. This can be a regular homework assignment - bring at least one reading material from home to show at school each week.

No Homework Today!

“Physical Activity Time” today was really interesting! Our large group of students went to the track and practiced long-jumping. Kids were to run down the runway, step on the take-off board with one foot, and then, jump and land on two feet. It was amazing to see how much better their performance was after just one jump! Everyone’s balance was terrific, and their coordination was super! Everyone did so much better when they had a chance to practice just once!

Notes Coming Home Friday!

“Chimacum PTSA Newsletter”
This newsletter has lots of information about membership, leadership, notes about projects and progress, and a membership form. The more parents we have in our PTSA, the better all our school events will be, so think about signing up and helping out.

“Picture Day” Announcements
A flyer is being sent home to announce the upcoming School Picture Day. The pictures will be individual. No group picture at this time. The date is Tuesday, October 9, 2007. Prices for packages range from $9.50 to $53.00. There are actually 15 package options.

Homework today!

We discussed and sent home the “Informed Consent Agreement for Use of Computers”. Students must have this filled out and signed before they can use the school’s computers for the school year. Since we will have the opportunity to use library and classroom computers for research and reference, taking care of this is very important. Please send it back as soon as possible.

These students excelled on the recent ‘Decomposing Numbers Assessment’ quiz.

Ben, Isaiah, Jonathan, Devin, Anna, Quentin, Levi, Crystal, Ernest, Tyler, Kayla, Victor, Ashlee, Maya, Michael, Vicki, Ched, Kelsey, Kiersten, Bailey, Justina, Thor, Stormie, Stacies, Ally, Jeff, Rosie, Alyssa W., and Drew Y.

These students excelled on the recent ‘Fraction Concepts’ quiz.

Stephen, Jonathan, Quentin, Levi, Ernest, Kelsey, Devin, Aschlynn, Drew S., Thor, Jordan, and Rosie.

These students excelled on the recent ‘Science Assessment - Environmental Factors’ quiz.

Kelsey, Harry, Jeff, Devin, Crystal, Kayla, Ashlee, Aschlynn, Justina, Stormie, and Stacies.

Homework today!

Reading - “Desert Details” Main Ideas and Supporting Details
Reading - “Animals Near the Water” Supporting Details (on the reverse side of the other)
Math - “Make Your Own Puzzle” - Using factors and number sense concepts.

Social Studies

We dove head-first into explorers today! Children were very excited to visit the school library to search out the initial information for their project. Ideas for projects ranged from early Chinese exploration to Space. Later, we will focus specifically on the exploration of North America.

See the Project Outline on our Social Studies Page (see the link at the right!)

No Homework Today!

Get out and Explore!

We began our next Social Studies unit by introducing the idea of exploration. Students will be studying the reasons for exploring and those that have made significant contributions to their respective peoples.

Our first step will be to look at explorers from early ancient times to present day. We want to know what their names are, what time period they explored during, and where they explored.

Students will be required to complete a poster-style presentation and a 1-minute talk about their subject of study. This will be due on October 12, and will be available for viewing at Open House on Thursday, October 18.