Text Box: The Sixth Grade is keeping busy right through June. We will be taking a field trip to the Imax Theatre on April 28 to see two movies: Amazon and Desolation 3D. These movies connect with our science curriculum. Parents are always welcome to join us on our field trips. Parents are asked to sign up with their child’s teacher. In May, we will be studying the Rainforest of South America. The rainforest will be studied in many of our classes. We will be learning about the layers of the rainforest in science, the culture of the people who live there in social studies and reading and writing about it in language arts. This leads up to a culminating activity which is a museum in June. Students will be creating a museum exhibit about a South American country. Fifth graders are invited in to tour the various countries. In addition to studying the rainforest, we will be looking at plants and animals within our county, when we travel to the Wild 100 on May 23. On that day, we will be looking for evidence of various animals and surveying the variety and numbers of plants we see. This is a field trip that needs many chaperones, so any parents who are available are asked to sign up with their child’s teacher. Text Box: Sixth Graders Stay Busy Text Box: Fifth Grade Team News Text Box: As spring approaches and conferences conclude, the 5th grade team is busy in their final trimester as they attempt to wrap up all necessary material in each of their content areas. In Social Studies, students will work through the Revolutionary War and will learn about the principles of how our new nation was founded. A reinforcement of our core democratic values will now have added meaning, based on the sacrifices made during the American Revolution. Students will also be composing position papers, explaining their views between the British and Colonists. In Math, fifth graders are just beginning their geometry unit. In this unit they will start with a study of angles. Students will be measuring them and learning how to draw them. We will also study the properties of triangles and parallelograms by finding their angle measurements, areas, and perimeters. Then we will begin our study of volume and conversions among units of measure. Lastly this year we will do a unit on data and probability. That unit will cover finding the average of a set of data by using different types of graphs. As you can tell, we still have a great deal of curriculum to cover. So expect homework in math on a regular basis! In Science, students are wrapping up their unit on magnets. They will conclude the year by studying rocks, minerals and plants. We are also in the beginning stages of planning a trip to the Gerald E. Eddy Discovery Center, which will offer complimentary lessons to what we have already learned and what we will be learning for the remainder of the year. We will be sending out permission slips with chaperone information in the weeks to come. Language Arts Classes will conclude the trimester with the genre forms of mysteries, poetry, historical fiction, tall tales or science fiction. All students will read books and analyze the various elements from each of their selections, and then they will write a piece based on their readings and the writing traits they studied. Core classes will continue to offer students a variety of experiences. Creative expression, "Math Madness," Spanish, Art and coming with warmer weather, Outdoor Fitness games will be offered one day each week.