Language Arts

LANGUAGE ARTS: will be taught by Mrs. Ginsberg, Mr. Mulcahy, Mrs. Varden, and Mrs. Williams. Mrs. Ginsberg will teach ELA to her own homeroom and Mrs. O'Connell's homeroom, and Mrs. Varden, Mr. Mulcahy, and Mrs. Williams will teach ELA to their own homerooms. We will do lots of writing, grammar, and spelling. You can expect to read and write almost every day. Here's a brief overview of the Language Arts curriculum:

WRITING: You can expect to write almost every day. Writing is a vital part of Language Arts in the fifth grade. Writing is something that you will do for the rest of your life, and it is very important that you learn how to do it correctly. We follow the 6 + 1 Traits writing curriculum in the 5th TEAM.

In these classes, writing will be short term and long term. By that we mean you will be writing short, quickly concluding pieces, and you will have long-term projects that may take several days to several months to complete. For example, we begin our year with the Moon Journal project in October. It's wonderful and VERY creative! We KNOW you will enjoy it very much, but it's not easy!

We may also do a project called the Poetry Anthologies in the spring. These are beautiful, but, again - a LOT of work!

Our long-term writing assignment is the grade five Autobiographies. This will take all year and your parents will be very involved!

This is just a taste of our writing curriculum. You will have a block of time in the computer lab to "publish" your writing each week, so try not to get behind. "Works in progress" are more easily managed when you have the work in school, so please do not take your writing home until you and we decide it's ready to go. OK?
Since we all have email addresses, we do encourage parents to email their children's writing pieces if typing is done at home.

SPELLING: Our spelling curriculum corresponds to our Reading curriculum. There will be schoolwork and homework as needed.

GRAMMAR:
We follow the grammar lessons included in the reading program. All grammatical lessons coincide with each week's story.

READING:
Our 5th TEAM classes will be primarily using Guided Reading and/or Literature Circles. We utilize different instructional media, such as tradebook literature (chapter books), informational texts that integrate our curriculas' content areas, and leveled books to accomodate the range of abilities in our classrooms.

Our supplemental series is called "Making Meaning", and it is a wonderful resource to increase our students' abilities in the area of comprehension. It has a wonderful social component because much of the work is done among the students themselves working in pairs as they talk to each other about the books that they are reading individually. "Making Meaning" is used extensively in Social Studies, too.

Each student's reading level will be determined by using DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) and Dibels testing at the beginning of the school year.

We will also be doing RAH (Reading At Home) every day using suggested titles from the reading program, and we will also use some corresponding titles from our rather extensive grade five trade books collection. These are novels that have been chosen for our students' learning and enjoyment especially by the fifth grade teachers and our Reading Specialist. You will be expected to read each night for at least 20 minutes, and complete a RAH sheet related to your week's reading. This sheet (included in a RAH booket) is to be signed by a parent or guardian and returned to your chid's reading teacher at the end of each week.

From time to time you will have reading projects (such as our "Living Biographies") due, but we'll explain those in plenty of time.

WORDLY WISE:
You will be working on this vocabulary curriculum in your homeroom, taught by your homeroom teacher. This is a wonderful vocabulary learning experience, but it's not easy! You will have Wordly Wise homework each night (Monday through Thursday) and you will have a test each Friday. The good news is that by the end of the year, you will have mastered over 300 new words to add to your vocabulary!

 

Our Science curriculum in Hudson is called "FOSS " or Full Option Science System. In fifth grade we spend the year studying some interesting areas of Science inquiry. This deep introspection really helps our students figure out how things work. We will spend some time preparing for the MCAS exam in May. More information will be given to you later.

 

Social Studies

Your Social Studies teacher in the 5TH TEAM will be Mrs. Williams for four classes and Mrs. Ginsberg for one class.

We will begin our work in grade five this year by focusing on an in-depth study of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with emphasis on Constitution Day, September 17, 2010. We will spend a great deal of time learning about our government, how laws are made, elections, etc. During the second half of the year will be taking an ethical look at history by examining some issues such as slavery, wars and other conflicts, overviews of the Holocaust, and the Civil Rights movement.

New this year is a separate Geography block for each of our 5th grade students. Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Ginsberg, and Mr. Mulcahy will be teaching these blocks. Some areas to be studied will be the United States and the world in Geography because it is very important to know where we are located on Earth.

We will have lively discussions, some interesting debates, some short writing assignments relating to the topics we're studying, and we'll do other interesting things to learn social studies.

Another aspect of Social Studies is Current Events. Our study of Current Events comes from using Time For Kids each week, and classroom discussions of what is currently in the news. You will have "TFK" homework most weeks.

Grade five will also be participating in the D.A.R.E. program and "Rachel's Challenge". More information on these programs will follow.