Mrs. Halpainy’s Class notes:-Our class has been beginning a unit on the Solar System.  Not only have we been reading various books and stories about it we have also been creating diagrams and pictures labeling different parts of our Solar System.  We have just completed a very large diagram of the sun.  We have labeled each part including the core, corona, chromoshpere, convective zone, radiative zone, spicules, sun spots and solar flares.Students are working on their science fair projects and studying constellations.  They are making 3-d models of constellations to share with the class.

Mrs. Hensel’s class are wrapping up their unit on Heritage.  We have learned many interesting things about our families.  We will be finishing up our individual books next week.  We have also made quite a bit of progress in our class novel, Danger in Quicksand Swamp.  Students are writing their own plans to solve the dilemma of Jake and Ben.  Right now, the boys are stranded on an island, surrounded by alligators and quicksand, with no way to get off the island.

Mr. Skudlarek’s class have finished an overview of body systems in Science.  The students enjoyed learning about their Digestive, Respiratory, Circulatory and Nervous Systems.  Throughout the course of study, students created illustrations that were drawn using measurement skills.  These were fine lined, labeled and colored to illustrate the structures and to help students better understand the workings of their bodies.  Graphic organizers were made and displayed in the classroom for each body system.  The students used the flow charts to practice writing essays and emphasis was given to the importance of writing across the curriculum.In Language Arts, the students read the daring tale of escape as great grandmother Sashie recounts how her family escaped the persecution of tsarist Russia.  The students compared and contrasted the events of this week’s story, The Midnight Journey with Number of the Stars.  Both stories revolved around the persecution of Jews in Europe.We have started a unit on Canada.  We have been discussing the provinces and territories, and are now getting a” feel” for our neighbor to the North.  We are almost finished with our heritage unit in reading and have started appreciating different cultures.  We also try to include the element of character education when discussing other cultures, remembering to respect our differences with one another. In math we are studying fractions learning how to add, subtract, and next week we’ll start borrowing in fractions.  Fractions seem to be a major focus of fifth grade math.   

Mrs. Goodyear's Class:
Science:  We have begun our Astronomy Unit through BOCES.  We made a distance scale map of our solar system by mapping out our Solar System around school.  We found out that it takes 1 1/2 times around the school to get from the Sun to Jupiter!
Math:  We continue working on long division by doing partial algorithems.
ELA:  We are continuing to work on our Heritage Theme.  We are also reading the book "Belle Prater's Boy" by Ruth White.  This is a mystery book that takes place in a very rural town in the 1950s.  We are writing journal prompts about each chapter to work on our Step Up to Writing Skills.
Social Studies:  We have begun our Presidential Research and have begun our Civil War Unit.