Welcome to Miss Newman's Fifth Grade Class!

  Parents,

Please check your child's red homework folder daily.  Important notices, graded papers, and finished classwork should all be removed from the folder.  This will help your child be more organized and more successful.

Welcome to a wonderful new school year!   Thank you for visiting our classroom webpage, and I hope this will be a resource for you as the year progresses.

This is my third year teaching fifth grade at J.C. Parks Elementary School.  I am a graduate of Winston-Salem State University, located in North Carolina.  My hobbies include singing, reading, writing, cooking, and performing with community theater groups.  I have two cats and am an avid animal lover, which you will see this year!

This is a very important transition year.  It is the year that students get to show off everything they have learned in elementary school and prepare for their next phase: middle school.  Students will have numerous opportunities to demonstrate their increasing responsibility and organizational skills as the year progresses.  Fifth grade is a hard year because there is a lot of work, but it is also a fun year as students get to demonstrate their individuality with projects and activities.  I am excited to begin this journey with our new fifth graders!

To be announced as soon as it is written!

This year Room 95 will have its very own economy system.  My goal in using this system is to teach students the very valuable life skills of budgeting, working towards ownership, and delayed gratification.  Students will apply for specific classroom jobs on the first day of school.  We will discuss each job and its pay in detail before the application process.  The jobs will be semi-permanent (Students may quit and apply for an available job at the beginning of each quarter).  Students will receive a "paycheck" for doing their jobs and extra "cash" for taking part in other school activities (chorus, band, chess club, etc.).  Students will keep ledgers of their credits and debits and at the end of each month we will have an auction for school supplies and other materials.  Debits will come in the form of rent and fines.  Students will rent their desk space, with the option to buy if they save up three times the value of their rent.  They may also have to pay fines for messy desks, messy lockers, incomplete jobs, etc.   

  This is not a system to turn students into "mini-adults."  It is a valuable and effective way to encourage students to learn the skills mentioned above.

Economy News:

Donated items are greatly welcomed.  You would be amazed at what our students love.  As you are out and about, please think of us if you see cute items in the dollar store, 5 and Below, Target, or Walmart.  Pencils, pens, and goofy science items are like gold! 

A great big thank you for donations from parents of years past and present and teachers at JC Parks!!!

Students will have a weekly paragraph assigned on Fridays and due on the next Friday.  These paragraphs will be graded according to a rubric given each week and are a tool that will be used to help students work on their writing.  We will focus on a variety of topics and use the actual paragraphs to learn how to write better.  I have stressed to the students that no matter how well or how bad they write, this year they will work to improve their writing.  Parents, please be ready to help your child proofread, but do not worry about perfection.  We can only improve by making mistakes! 

Paragraphs will follow a standard structure.

• Sentence 1 is a topic sentence
• Sentences 2, 3, and 4 are supporting detail sentences
• Sentence 5 is a concluding sentence