November 18-24

Independent Reading Assignment

Due to popular demand, the Independent Reading assignment due date has been changed from November 22 to December 5.  Many students felt they needed more time to reach their AR point goals.  For those students that will have met their personal goal by November 22, keep reading and taking tests.  Points earned above your goal will earn you extra credit!  So keep reading! 

Don't forget the Independent Reading assignment includes the following:  AR points, Mystery Story Map, Mystery Analysis questions, and Wow! Words.  Take your time when completing the story map and answering questions.  Take pride in your work by paying attention to spelling and punctuation.  Your responses should be thoughtful and supported with evidence from the text. I suggest you type out your responses to the questions to practice your typing skills and enhance the appearance and readability of your work.

Colonial Day is this Friday, November 22

Thank you to all the parents that volunteered to support our Colonial Day! It is guaranteed to be a successful learning experience for all of our Caughlin 5th graders.

November 12-17

Science Carnival

The Caughlin Ranch Science Carnival will be this coming Wednesday, November 13, from 6-7 pm.    Community voluteers whose jobs and careers involve science will be presenting information and activities in science "booths" set-up in the multipurpose room. The Northern Nevada Astronomy Group will have telescopes on the playground, and UNR engineering students will be in the computer lab.

Colonial Day is Coming!

In order to bring American history alive and understand how children of the past lived, Caughlin Ranch 5th grade will be hosting the 12 annual Colonial Day! Colonial Day is an activity to support and enhance our Colonial America unit of study. During the day students will play, eat, and even dance (thanks, Mrs. Jackson!) as children living in colonial Williamsburg in the 1770s. Colonial Day 2013 will be on Friday, November 22.

 

An informational flyer asking for parental help went home in Friday's, November 8, Folder. We will need parents to prepare food, cut cloth, and assist in the rotation activities during the day. In my classroom, students will be making and dressing corn husk dolls, the more helping hands the better! Since we do not have a third 5th grade teacher this year, colonial games will need to be manned entirely by parents. 

To make the event as historically accurate and fun as possible, we encourage students to dress in a colonial fashion. For girls this means a dress or skirt. I will provide each young lady with an apron, and the girls will be making their own mob caps. For the young gents, I suggest they wear football/baseball pants or roll up pants to simulate breeches, knee length pants, and tall socks. A dress shirt and, if possible, a vest or dress coat, will complete their outfit. Boys will be fashioning cravats, precursor to the tie, out of material. Don't rush out to purchase clothing--raid every closet in the house. One of the best dressed colonial lads I ever saw wore his mother's full sleeved blouse and her vest! If you do decide to buy something, try Savers or one of the other used clothing stores. Old Halloween costumes can be fashioned into colonial clothing, too.

Below are some examples of student clothing from last year: 

 

 

 

November 4-12

Conference Week Follow-Up

I greatly enjoyed meeting with you and discussing your child’s assessment data and student skills last week.  But I made a mistake in regards to the SBAC (Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium) computerized test.  The SBAC test will be administered next school year in the spring of 2015, not this year school year.  Students can still take the practice tests which are assessing our new Common Core Standards, but just know the traditional paper and pencil bubble in test will be given in May of this school year.  I apologize for this mistake in dates.

Explorer Presentations

We will discuss necessary skills for giving a presentation to the class on Monday.  Students will be asked to prepare a one to two minute presentations on their explorer.  Students should practice the presentation at home this week.  Presentations will be given on Friday of this week.

Math

The Everyday Math Unit 3 Geometry Checking Progress assessment is tentatively scheduled for this coming Friday.  We will review for this assessment in class during the week.