WEEKLY UPDATE

Congratulations to:
- all choir members on a wonderful performance!
- all All Stars who tried out for the basketball team!

Events and clubs at Grant such as choir and basketball and hiking club and art club and book club and on and on and on are a huge part of what makes Grant a Grant School.  We are always impressed with the skills and talents our All Stars have.  Below is a list of the academic skills we are focusing on currently.  There is also a picture of Ms Emi, a biology student from UMC who is teaching us about experimental design and helping us plan our Community Project.  Her project focuses on zebra fish development.

READING: We are integrating some reading time with our Health Power unit and also focusing on having 5 book shares completed.  Next week we will be using all our reading time integrated with nonfiction reading about the New England Colonies.

WRITING: Writers are completing their Narrative drafts.  They look fantastic!  I imagine many of them will make it into their 2nd trimester portfolios.  We have focused on dialogue, story structure, describing character actions, commas, and transitions.  Next week will be a solid word study week!

MATH:  After exploring fractions with manipulatives the last two weeks we are applying our knowledge.  Kids are doing great and we will have a quiz this Friday.  Next week, we will start actively adding and subtracting fractions.

SCIENCE:  As a 5th grade we have finally decided on the focus for our Community Project.  The guiding science question is a psychology study: How do outdoor education activities affect learners' attitudes and knowledge?  We are actively investigating science objectives of elementary grade levels and beginning to discuss our methods.  Ideally, our 5th graders will be planning outdoor education activities for younger classes and recording their attitudes and knowledge.  This has been fun planning already.  We will keep you posted!

SOCIAL STUDIES: We are using our social studies time this week for our Health Power unit.  When Power is over sometime next week, we will be delving into the New England Colonies leading up to the causes of the American Revolution.

Meet Ms. Emi, our graduate biology partner, who is assisting us with our science work.