Friday, January 17th, 2025

Happy Friday Families!

What an eventful couple of weeks we have had since returning from winter break with our cold weather. It’s hard to believe, but Valentine parties are just around the corner and we are looking forward to many other engaging learning experiences throughout the rest of January and beginning in February.

Literacy

These last two weeks, we continued to practice analyzing multiple perspectives using nonfiction texts. With various reading passages, we compared and contrasted different author's points of view regarding topics such as school uniforms, video games, and rescuing penguin populations. While we read these texts, we continued to practice identifying the author’s main point, and the reasons and evidence that the author uses to support it. 

In the next couple of weeks, we will be shifting back to fiction to read George’s Secret Key to the Universe. This text will help us prepare for our next writing unit as well, science fiction! As we read the novel we will be working on a variety of reading skills such as comparing characters, analyzing the point of view, and determining the theme. Please note that Monday - Thursday, our students will have reading homework sent home, which will include reading chapter(s) and answering a comprehension question. This is a great opportunity to check in with your child and ask them about the book!

Writing

This week, we shifter our focus from analytic writing to narrative writing, where we've asked students to finish a story from a given introduction, rising action, and climax.  Over the next few weeks, our students will shift their narrative focus with a science fiction based prompt. This will tie in nicely with our upcoming novel, George's Secret Key to the Universe!

Math

This week we began Unit 5: Multiplying and Dividing Fractions.  Our students will start to create concrete models to represent numerical calculations. The goal is to help them create and visualize the multiplication problems they were presented with. The models our students will learn will help provide them with a deeper understanding of these concepts.

Social Studies

In this unit, we are focusing on the Colonial Era. We are starting to discuss the motivations behind why European countries had a strong desire to expand their empires into the "New World" during the age of exploration. Over the next few weeks, we will also analyze the effects and impacts of colonization in North and South America during this time in history. 

Winter Break Party Pictures!

Upcoming Events

• Monday, January 20 - No School (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)

• Friday, February 14th - Half Day (School Improvement Day). WE WILL STILL HAVE THE VALENTINE'S DAY PARTY. TIMING TBD.

Friendly Reminders

• Since winter weather is here, please make sure your student is properly dressed for recess.

• Please remind your student to charge his/her iPad and Logitech Crayon every night

• Please remember to send your student with a healthy snack - nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!  

• Please continue to have your student practice their multiplication facts up to 12

• If your child participates in orchestra or band, please remind him/her to bring their instrument on their lesson day

Thank you for your continued partnership and have a wonderful week!

Monday, October 28th, 2024

Happy Friday Families!

It's so hard to believe that October is almost in the rear view mirror and that November is just around the corner! Now that we're deep into the first grading period, I am excited to see how much more our students will grow throughout the year. There is so much to teach and so much to learn, but so little time!

Literacy

Our students finished our first novel this school year, The Night of the Spadefoot Toads. Our students truly enjoyed sharing a longer text that extended over multiple weeks. Using this shared text, we worked on literacy skills such as identifying the narrator's point of view.

This week, we started reading a nonfiction text titled Explorers: Triumphs and Troubles. This text highlights the details and impact of various explorers' expeditions throughout history. As we read the text, we are working on identifying the author's main point(s) while determining reasons and evidence as support. To practice determining the author's main point/s, we ask ourselves, "What does the author MOST want us to know or believe about what was written?" We will continue our work on this learning target using various texts.

Writing

Our students are deep into planning and writing their first analytical prompt. Students chose an ecosystem and researched the threats that there are to that ecosystem, as well as ways to protect that ecosystem. We are now working on planning body paragraphs that are well supported with not only text evidence, but our own words in an explanation.

Math 

This week, we wrapped up our second unit in math, which focused on adding and subtracting fractions. This past Thursday, we started unit 3, which focuses on adding and subtracting decimals.  Over the course of the next few weeks, our students will turn their focus on rounding numbers, including decimals up to the thousandths place.

Social Studies

We are really enjoying our first Social Studies unit! Our discussions have focused around the perceptions of Indigenous American Cultures and learning how to formulate questions to help guide our students' learning on how to better honor the cultural heritage of this land. Our students were especially fascinated about the Native Americans' perceptions of the first Thanksgiving Dinner.

Upcoming Dates

Thursday, October 31st - Halloween Parties

Tuesday, November 4th - No School (Election Day)

Friendly Reminders

**Please remind your student to charge his/her iPad and Logitech Crayon every night.

**If your child participates in orchestra or band, please remind him/her to bring their instrument on their lesson day.

**Please remember to send your student with a healthy snack - nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!

**Please continue to have your student practice their multiplication facts up to 12.

Friday, September 20th, 2024

Happy Friday Families!

Welcome to the first installment of our bi-monthly blog post! It is my goal to keep you informed and up-to-date about the learning that is taking place in the classroom, as well as making sure you are aware of important upcoming dates and and events.

There has been a lot going on in our classroom this past month, and we are looking forward to what the school year still has in store for us. Here are the concepts we are currently/planning to work on:


Reading

Over the last couple of weeks, our students have read various texts in order to determine the narrator's point of view. Much of our instruction revolved around Road to Freedom and Operation Clean Sweep, a story about a boy whose mom is secretly running to be mayor of their town. Through these texts, our students were able to have an understanding of how a narrator’s perspective can influence the way events are described. We are looking forward to beginning our new longer shared text, The Night of the Spadefoot Toad, next week.

Writing
Our students wrapped up their first narrative pieces. They demonstrated great success utilizing their graphic organizers to plan and develop their stories through the use of a detailed sequence of events and effective character development. Students were also encouraged to add dialogue into their writing to enhance the reader’s understanding of their characters, setting, and events. Last week, our students started to plan a second narrative piece in order to apply what we’ve learned in order to produce an even higher quality sample.

Math
Our students wrapped up Unit 1, which focused on evaluating numerical expressions with parentheses, using the correct order of operations. We are also a month into our Number Corner lessons, which have been focused around clock and money fractions and finding the volume of rectangular prisms. We began Unit 2, which will focus on addition and subtraction of fractions. The introduction of clock and money fractions in Number Corner will help to provide a springboard for teaching our students to find common denominators before adding or subtracting fractions.

Science
We wrapped up our discussions about ecosystems. Over the last couple of weeks, we learned about consumers and the flow of energy through an ecosystem. We learned that consumers must eat animals in order to obtain their energy and to survive. Through various discussions, activities, and investigations, we also learned that food webs can be severely impacted by naturally occurring events, such as Red Tide.

Upcoming Events
*Tuesday, September 24th - Thursday, September 26th - PTO Book Fair
*Thursday, October 3rd - NO SCHOOL (Rosh Hashanah)
*Friday, October 4th - Cat Pack Activity
*Wednesday, October 9th - Picture Retake Day
*Thursday, October 10th - NO SCHOOL (Family/Educator Conferences)
*Friday, October 11th - NO SCHOOL (Family/Educator Conferences)
*Monday, October 14th - NO SCHOOL (Columbus/Indigenous’ Peoples Day)


Friendly Reminders
**Please have your child charge his or her iPad every evening. Much of what we do throughout the day revolves around our iPads.
**Please remember to send your child with a healthy snack each day. Nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!
**Please continue to have your child practice their multiplication facts up to 12.

Thank you for your partnership this school year and have a wonderful weekend!

Enzie Pangilinan

Pictures:

Back To School Assembly

Fun Run 2024

Tuesday, May 28th, 2024

Happy Tuesday Families! 

It’s hard to believe that it's our our last week of school! Although we’ve been wrapping up the year with some final assessments in different subject areas, we’ve also been fitting in many fun activities! Our hope is for your student to end 5th grade with many fond, lasting memories! Highlights of last week included Field Day on Wednesday, as well as today’s 5th grade games rotations! We are looking forward to more fun this week!

Please also note: donation boxes have been set up by the student council for the purpose of donating unused school supplies. Kindly have a discussion with you student about whether you would like any unused supplies to be donated, or would prefer them to be brought home.

Literacy

We have spent much of our time in literacy comparing and contrasting the way in which authors approach the theme of stories. We’ve learned that they often show the theme through character actions, dialogue, repetition, and other devices. We’ve also analyzed poetry for this purpose as well.

Writing

Our latest writing samples have piggybacked on our learning about comparing and contrasting how authors show theme. Here, we’ve been taking our ideas one step further, and organizing them into analytical papers. Our final PBA of the year required students to compose an essay which compared and contrasted the ways in which the authors showed the theme in two folktales. 

Math

We wrapped up our final math unit of the year on Wednesday, which included skills in multi-digit division, as well as multiplying and dividing decimals. 

Science

This week we finished a series of lessons within our matter unit about how to know when new substances are created. We ended with an investigation where students mixed substances such as water, vinegar, iodine, baking soda, salt, and sugar together in different combinations and observed whether new substances were formed! We Looked for changes in color, temperature, and fizzing/bubbling to indicate when a chemical reaction had taken place. 

Upcoming Events

Monday, May 27: Memorial Day No School

Friday, May 31st: Last Day of School 1/2 Day Dismissal at 11:45

Thank you for your partnership this school year and have a wonderful summer!

Enzie Pangilinan

Thursday, May 9th, 2024

Happy Thursday Families!

It is crazy to think we have already reached our last month of the school year! Students have worked hard this week and finished our last round of MAP tests for the year.

Literacy

This week, we read the adventure stories- Secrets of Canyon Cave and The Two Travelers.  We read closely to understand the characters’ points of view and how their personalities and feelings impacted the choices they made. After reading both stories we discovered a common theme and discussed the strategies each author used to develop the theme.

Writing

In writing, we used the science fiction stories, Jess and Layla’s Astronomical Adventure and  Mayday on the Moon of Jupiter, to write an essay comparing strategies authors use when developing themes.  First, we identified common strategies authors use such as setting, dialogue, character actions, character thoughts, word choice, repetition, conflict, and resolution. The students then completed a double bubble comparing which strategies were used in both stories.  Finally, they used details from each story to support how the authors developed the theme.  The students showed a lot of perseverance with this challenging task!

Math

We continued working with division word problems and how to decide what to do with a remainder.  We also spent time practicing how to multiply and divide decimals by powers of ten. The students worked hard to understand and explain why we move the decimal point when multiplying and dividing by powers of ten.  Ask your child to explain the direction the decimal point moves when we divide versus when we multiply.

Science

This week we completed our study about the Conservation of Matter.  The students had a lot of fun doing various activities to learn about physical and chemical changes.  They used digital scales to weigh the mass of Skittles and legos, and created bar graphs comparing the mass of different colored candies and blocks.  We also started our last science unit about mixtures and solutions.  The kids loved testing different solutions of baking soda, borax, vinegar and milk to see if any had a chemical reaction.  We even made slime! Ask your child to explain the process to you.

PTO Reminders

*May 17th - 5th graders will enjoy an in school party sponsored by Ivy Hall PTO,  with a complimentary lunch from Wiener Take All, and an afternoon full of music and fun activities. One per student. Students may also purchase lunch from Organic Life or bring lunch from home. Please select their entree at http://linktr.ee/ivyhallpto  

*Submit a baby picture by May 12th for a photo montage that will be displayed during lunch and at the in school party on May 17th.  Submit a baby photo at https://forms.gle/6Dyc1a1omUtuqxTKA

*May 30th 6:30pm - 8pm - Combined celebration event with Prairie School at Just For Fun Roller Rink in Mundelein, sponsored and chaperoned by Ivy Hall PTO. Tickets are $20 and includes 2 slices of pizza, water, skate rental and light-up giveaway.  Sign up at http://linktr.ee/ivyhallpto

Upcoming Events

• Monday, May 13th - Band Concert 6:30 pm

• Wednesday, May 15th - Literacy Placement Test

• Thursday, May 16th - Orchestra Concert 6:30 pm

• Friday, May 17th - Tour Twin Groves 8:45am

• Friday, May 17th - 5th Grade Celebration 1:15 pm

• Friday, May 17th - PTO Family Picnic 6:00 pm

• Tuesday, May 21st - Early Release

• Wednesday, May 22nd- Field Day

• Friday, May 24th - Half Day - dismissal at 11:45 am

Friendly Reminders

• Please remind your student to charge his/her iPad and Logitech Crayon every night

• Please remember to send your student with a healthy snack

• Please continue to have your student practice multiplication facts up to 12

• Band and orchestra students should remember to be prepared with their instruments and music books on the days of lessons

Sunday, April 28th, 2024

Happy Sunday Families!

This week we began our final cycle of the school year! Summer is just around the corner. As we progress through the final months of school, we will have many special events and dates that will be important to mark on calendars. Please pay special attention to the dates listed at the bottom of the blog updates so that you can stay informed!

Literacy

This week, we began reading a fun book called Jess and Layla’s Astronomical Adventure. We will be comparing fictional texts of similar content and/or topic. The two main characters of the story travel back in time and meet many of history’s famous philosophers and scientists! As we read, we will continue to practice literacy skills such as comparing and contrasting characters and settings, analyzing themes, and using quoted evidence from a text to support responses. Next week, we will read another science fiction story of the same genre called Mayday on the Moon of Jupiter, so that we can compare and contrast how the two stories approach their respective themes. 

Writing

We wrapped up our Real Life Superhero speeches this week! Students have really enjoyed researching, working on their notecards, and presenting about their real-life superhero to the class. We learned so much about individuals, such as Malala Yousafzai, Clara Barton, Albert Einstein, and Muhammad Ali, who made a positive impact on our society. During the rest of the year, we will continue to work on refining our analytical writing skills.

Math

We are in our last unit of math this year! This unit teaches us multiple strategies for dividing whole numbers. Some strategies for division include: ratio table, area model, partial quotients, and the standard algorithm. Students have been working hard to refine their skills to divide multi-digit numbers using a strategy they feel most comfortable with. Within the unit, we will also be learning more about the powers of ten and multiplying and dividing decimals. 

Science

We have begun our final science unit exploring the concept of conservation of matter. This week, students completed a lab where they tested liquids to see which ones would clean the tarnish off a penny. Then, when one penny changed from dark and dirty to bright and shiny, they had the chance to think about where the tarnish went. We are looking forward to many more hands-on investigations later in the unit.

Social Studies

Last week, we wrapped up our final inquiry-based social studies unit of the year. We explored the topic of democracy and generated ideas throughout the unit about how citizens can contribute to keeping a democracy healthy. Students worked in groups on an Informed Action Project based on one of the Five Habits of the Heart. They did a great job!

Upcoming Events

• Tuesday, April 30th - Twin Groves Musical Presentation (5th grade travels to TG)

• Tuesday, April 30th - Early Release (Dismissal @ 2:05)

• Wednesday, May 1st - MAP Testing (Reading)

• Thursday, May 2nd - MAP Testing (Math)

• Friday, May 3rd - Field Trip to Dunn Museum 

• Wednesday, May 15th - Literacy Placement Test

Friendly Reminders

• Please remind your student to charge his/her iPad and Logitech Crayon every night

• Please remember to send your student with a healthy snack - nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!  

• Please continue to have your student practice their multiplication facts up to 12

• Band and orchestra students should remember to be prepared with their instruments and music books on the days of lessons

Thank you for your continued partnership!

Enzie Pangilinan

Friday, April 12th, 2024 And Eclipse Pictures!

Happy Friday Families!

Welcome back! With Spring Break past us, it could only mean one thing...the countdown to summer has officially begun! We are looking forward to all the fun and learning that's ahead of us within the last couple months of school! 

Literacy

This week, we read and learned about the Navajo code talkers. During World War II, the code talkers played a crucial role in helping the U.S. Marines send coded messages using the complex and unwritten Navajo language. Using texts from RAZ Kids,  Newsela, and Epic, we are practicing our skill of compiling information from multiple sources together in order to demonstrate a deep understanding about a specific topic. Throughout the readings, we are also working on explaining relationships and interactions, such as cause/effect and problem/solution, while using text evidence as support.

In the upcoming weeks, we will be taking the series of literacy assessments used for middle school placement. The writing assessment will take place on Tuesday, April 16th.

 

Writing

Students have begun working on a research project and oral presentation. Piggybacking off the previous reading we did on real life superheroes such as Richard Martin and Raoul Wallenberg, each student will be asked to choose someone they feel embodies the qualities of a real life superhero. They will conduct research about this outstanding individual and give an oral presentation to the class explaining why they are a real-life superhero. This project incorporates many reading and writing targets for students.

Math

We are continuing to practice skills in the area of geometry in Unit 6. We have been exploring the hierarchy of polygons, with an emphasis on triangles and quadrilaterals. Using academic language related to angles and sides, students have been classifying and describing shapes based on their attributes. Next week, we will review and extend our thinking on the concept of volume, which was covered in Unit 1. Our next math placement assessment will be on Wednesday, April 24th. 

Social Studies

We are wrapping up our final unit next week on Rights & Responsibilities. Students have been working to understand how they can be civically engaged with their democracy…even though they can’t vote yet! Students have started working on their final informed action project in groups where they will create an end product focusing on the Five Habits of the Heart.

*Field Trip Reminder*

We are taking our class field trip on 5/3. If you have not filled out your child’s permission slip, please do so now!

Eclipse Pictures

Upcoming Events

• Tuesday, April 16th - Literacy Placement Test (Writing)

• Thursday, April 18th - Half Day- Dismissal @ 11:45

• Friday, April 19th- No School- Institute Day

• Wednesday, April 24th- Math Placement Test

• Friday, May 3rd- Field Trip- Dunn Museum

• Wednesday, May 15th- Literacy Placement Test (Reading)

Friendly Reminders

• Please remind your student to charge his/her iPad and Logitech Crayon every night

• Please remember to send your student with a healthy snack - nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!  

• Please continue to have your student practice their multiplication facts up to 12

• Band and orchestra students should remember to be prepared with their instruments and music books on the days of lessons

Thank you for your continued partnership and have a wonderful weekend!

Enzie Pangilinan