Rainbow Elementary School

Accelerated Reading

Please encourage your child to read every night. All students should be at 100% of their goal by the end of the nine weeks, and maintained at least 85% accuracy. The students received their reading goals on last week. These goals were set lower this first nine weeks to help students transition back in the school year. Our goal in 5th grade is to increase reading non-fiction text. The students will keep a reading log in their notebook to record their AR test only. I will use this to monitor students reading. If you did not register for HomeConnect, please do so as soon as possible. This will allow you to get instant feedback on your child's progress with AR and Math facts. A registration letter was sent home on last week.

Google Classroom

The students will be using the site at school and at home. We will be using Google Classroom in reading and social studies. The students will be able to review presentations, study guides, and complete assignments using this site. This is a great resource if your child is absent from school. We will also upload assignments and share information using this site.

Reading Interactive Notebook

Your child's Interactive Notebook becomes the anchor for the standards taught in class, as well as a reference that your child can use throughout the year. This notebook will cover all of the standards for literature, and Informational text.

Common Lit

This is an excellent resource to support literacy and critical thinking. This site provides high-quality reading passages that are Common-Core Aligned. This program builds critical thinking skills and accelerates learning. Please encourage your child to complete a minimum of three lessons of reading every week at home. This program allows me to monitor your child's progress on the fifth grade standards.

Novel Studies

We will read novels this year. These novels will focus on our objectives for the unit. Before we start our novel study, I will share information regarding our objectives for reading the novel.

Homework

Please review your child's planner for homework assignments every day. The students will use it to record assignments and important dates. It is the best source for daily assignments, changes in schedules, and test dates. The students will be given projects and quizzes this year. Some of the quizzes will be unannounced. This is an important skill your child will need before going to 6th grade.

Please encourage your child to read every day. Our goal is twenty minutes a day. The planner is the best source for current homework assignments. 

Greek/Latin Roots- In 5th grade, instead of a weekly spelling test, your child will focus on learning Greek/Latin Roots. An estimate of about 75% of the English language is derived from Greek and Latin roots. The students will focus on a set of Greek/Latin Roots each week. Please review some benefits of learning Greek/Latin Roots below:

Why should you be teaching Greek and Latin roots to your students?

1. Consistency: Not only do these roots follow fairly consistent orthographic patterns, they also have distinct semantic components; these features, when explicitly taught, allow students to link pronunciation, spelling, and meaning when encountering new and/or challenging words. Just as primary teachers utilize the consistency of word families to teach their emergent readers, upper grade and secondary teachers can also rely on the consistency of roots when teaching their students.

2. Effective Intervention: Many English language learners’ first language is based on the Latin lexicon (e.g. Spanish). Teaching roots to these students allows them to connect new English vocabulary to words they already know in their native language. Research also indicates that struggling (native-English) readers also benefit from the learning Greek and Latin roots.

3. Increased Demands: Each year students in grades 5 and higher encounter around 10,000 new words in their reading! Most of these new words will be of Greek and Latin origin. When students are familiar with highly utilized roots, learning such a vast number of new words becomes so much more manageable.

4. Technical Vocabulary: Content areas such as science and social studies overwhelm students with unfamiliar vocabulary. Fortunately, most of these scientific or scholarly terms are grounded in Greek and Latin origins. If students know the meaning of a root, they are more apt to determine the meaning of an unknown word that uses that root.

Grading Scale