Week of December 9, 2019

Dear Families, I hope you have all had a great week! We had a great one in Room 101, I can't believe we are a week away from winter break! On Monday during our morning meeting we discussed how we can show kindness during the holiday season. Students then wrote on a light bulb ways they can show kindness and we hung them up on our bulletin board!

In reading, we began a new historical fiction read aloud called Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan. This book takes a different perspective on WWII and students are really enjoying the book, especially since the main character is a 10 year old boy. As we read students make notes about the plot and characters in their reading response journals, using the reading strategies we have been learning during Reader's Workshop. After winter break we will start up new book club groups and students will dive into nonfiction texts!

In science, we continued talking about food webs and had our ecosystem vocabulary quiz. This should have been taken home last night and signed by someone at home. Yesterday, we did a Mystery Science and discussed the question, "why did dinosaurs go extinct?" We used our knowledge of food webs and food chains to discuss what may have happened.

In writing, we continued working on our second personal narrative but this time thinking about the heart of our story. In our first narrative we discussed the heart of our story as the main event and the part of our story that we slow down and stretch out. Now we are thinking about the heart of our story being the theme or the message we want to get across to our readers. This is helping students think about our stories in a whole other way. It is very hard to find our own theme but students are persevering and really digging deep into their story!

Congratulations to Saanvi Jegan for being one of Fisher School's winner for the Dedham Savings holiday card contest!! So proud!!

Some notes for next week:

• Students have earned their whole class reward of a holiday movie! We will watch the movie next Thursday, the 19th, in the morning. You may send in a special holiday snack for students to enjoy while watching their movie.
• We will also have our holiday celebration next Thursday. It will be with the entire grade 5 in the auditorium and students will participate in holiday games/activities.
• Next Friday, the 20th, is our Battle of the Books competition. If students participated in the battle please make sure they wear their team shirts to school that day!! We will start the day off with a team breakfast in the cafeteria.
• There will be NO spelling test next week.