Fantastic Fifth Graders in Room 53

Hello Families!
The month is coming to a close quickly and so is this trimester! Conferences are on our minds right now as they start next week on Tuesday! Just a reminder that during your conference time the book fair will be open from 4-8pm.
On Monday we will be starting our Discovery Unit in Social Studies. It will be lots of fun!
We will also be having an art lesson on Tuesday with Mrs. Erickson!
Mid-tri’s will be sent home next week, so keep your eyes open for them. Please sign the form and return it back to school with your child as soon as possible.
Also next week we will have pictures Friday morning. Our scheduled time is at 9:45am. Forms will be sent home Thursday if you would like to order some pictures of your lovely children! Please remind your child to check their school mailbox so that the forms get brought home to you.
Kids that are testing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with Mrs. Leslie be sure to get a good night’s rest and have a hearty breakfast!
That’s all for now! Don’t forget about the Vikings game Sunday night! It should be a good one!
Have a great weekend and go Vikes!
Mrs. Gute and Ms. Rohling

Hello Families!
We are going to try something new this time around during conferences. We would like the students to lead the conferences and have the opportunity to share their accomplishments with you. This is not a requirement, however. We understand that many of the students are active participants in the community and school outside of the school day and we don’t want to take them away from those activities. So, if your child cannot make it to the conferences that is fine. We will just run the conference like we have in the past.
Looking forward to meeting with you all soon!
Mrs. Gute and Ms. Rohling

Hello Families!
This week has flown by for all of us! I (Ms. Rohling) started to take over morning meetings and introduced a few new greetings and activities to the class which we will continue to use in the future. I will also be continuing to lead the morning meetings and on Tuesday when we all return to school I will also be leading math.
This week in Life Skills we learned about decision making. We know that all of the kids will make good choices!
We are VERY excited for our three-day weekend! Many of the students chose to wear purple in honor of the Vikings playoff game on Sunday. Mrs. Gute and Ms. Rohling will both be watching the game and hopefully will have positive reports to share with everyone on Tuesday after the Vikings beat the Dallas Cowboys!!!
Things to look forward to next week:
No School on Monday! Enjoy the day off from school and reflect upon how Martin Luther King, Jr. made an impact on us!!
Tuesday we will be presenting our Bio Cards for Social Studies. There will also be the second quiz on facts 9-18.
Wednesday we will have Life Skills with Miss Hokanson as Mrs. Paton recently had her baby. Miss Hokanson will be teaching Life Skills until about the middle of March.
Wednesday will be the final test for Social Studies.
Thursday we hope to see excellent spelling test scores! Parents, if you could check over the at-home lists that your children are bringing home that would be great. We don’t want to see any duplicate words or words spelled incorrect on their lists that they study from. A good way for the students to practice their words would be to type them up in a document on the computer or to type them in www.dictionary.com for some extra practice (then that way they can also double check to make sure they copied their challenge words correctly!)
Also, next week, all fifth grade rooms will be reviewing and testing for our math unit on fractions. It’s been a long unit, but we are confident that a lot of learning has been happening.  You may want to review some of these skills with your child.  In addition, we will be pretesting on Unit 6 and forming new math groups. 
That’s all for now! Stay tuned as we hope to upload some more pictures of your kids soon! Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Gute and Ms. Rohling

Hello Families-
Tomorrow in honor of the Vikings play – off game, I have asked students to show their purple pride by wearing Vikings attire or purple and gold. Check the blog soon for a class photo. Here is a preview to our purple pride…

Mrs. Gute and Maddie, Shianne and Ms. Rohling

Good morning families-
We are almost halfway through the school year…AMAZING! As we finish out the year, our classroom is in need of a few supplies! If you are able to donate, it would be greatly appreciated. Here are some of our needs:

1. Small individually wrapped candies (Jolly Ranchers,Tootsie Rolls, Smarties, Dum Dum Suckers, Mints, Hershey Kisses, etc.)
2. Hand Sanitizer
3. Hand Lotion (our hands get dry during outdoor recess and washing them frequently!)

Thank you so much for you generosity!

Mrs. Gute and Ms. Rohling

Group work on our Codex

Greetings Families!
We have enjoyed seeing your children back at school. It’s been a busy week! We have had a lot of fun sharing about our winter breaks. It sounds like everyone enjoyed their break.
We have been spending a significant amount of time working on our codex projects during social studies. Each student was assigned a group of people to read about and become an ‘expert’ on that group. The groups were the Inca, Aztec, Pueblo, Algonquin, and the Iroquois. After reading about each group, the children wrote up some information about their group on a piece of paper in the shape of an “X”. (Ask your child about it, I’m sure they can explain it better.) They then shared the knowledge that they had learned with a small group of students with other areas of expertise. It was obvious that everyone had learned a lot! Great work everyone!

An expert group working together

On Wednesday we all enjoyed some time in the afternoon with Mrs. Paton. She worked with the students to set up short term and long term goals.
We also had our Eagle Celebration on Wednesday.  Congratulations to Josh Johnson-our new citizen of the month!�
The school store will be opening up soon! A note went home with the students with materials that may be purchased and dates that we are invited to the store. We ask that the students bring no more than five dollars on any given day just in case the money would get lost sometime during the day.
Finally, conferences are right around the corner. A paper has been sent home that needs to be returned as soon as possible in order to help us set up a schedule that will help us to meet with all of you at a time that works. We’ll do our best to arrange a time that you would prefer.
We’ve had a great week so far!
Mrs. Gute and Ms. Rohling

Juan and David hard at work

Hello Families-
I hope you all enjoyed the winter vacation with your families and friends! Writing this is bittersweet…while I look forward to seeing everyone and getting back into the swing of things, my family and I made some wonderful memories over vacation! Our favorite gift we got was a new puppy….Casey!! Housetraining has been interesting though!!

Lexi, Casey, and Madison!!

Here are some things to look forward to next week as we return to school.

Monday – Ms. Rohling joins us again from Morris. She will be with us until spring vacation. She will not be doing much teaching this week yet, but instead observing and getting back into the swing of things!! Welcome Ms. Rohling!!

Tuesday – We will have a short presentation from NorthView Junior High on how to prepare for 7th grade! It will come up fast! We will work together to ensure that your child is prepared!!

Wednesday – Life Skills with Mrs. Paton will begin and continue until spring vacation. Each Wednesday at 1:30 we will work on character building and important life skills. Also, this afternoon we will have our Eagle Celebration! Can you guess who the new Citizen of the Month might be?

Friday – PTA Reflections work is due. This is optional but it would be wonderful if our classroom was represented. Check the Woodland webpage for more information. Student Council meeting at 8:30 AM.

For academic updates…please check the section at the top of the blog!!

See you on Monday!

Sarah Gute