5th Grade Team

TAKS Test Schedule

How can parents help in Reading?    

(Adapted from the TEA website)    

• Make sure your child sees you reading. You are your child’s first

and most influential teacher.

• Choose a special time and place to read aloud to your child

every day.  Try to talk the way the story’s characters would talk. Make

sounds and expressions that go along with the story (exciting, scary, or sad, for example). Help your child “hear” the excitement in a book.

• Listen to your child read to you for 15–20 minutes every day.
• Encourage your child to read a variety of stories and books, both fiction and non fiction
• If your child gets stuck at a difficult part, encourage him or her by saying: What could you try?  What do you think it could be?  What do you know that might help you?  Let’s read this part together.
• If your child doesn’t stop to correct a mistake, let him or her finish the sentence or page. Then repeat the sentence and the error, saying:

Does that sound right to you?  Does that make sense to you?  Try reading that again and think about what would make sense.

Before reading

• read the title of the book or story to your child and ask, What

does the title make you think the story will be about?

• have your child look at the pictures and talk about what he or

she thinks is happening in the story based on the pictures.

During reading

• ask your child questions that require more than a yes or no

answer: Have you ever felt like that? Why do you think that happened?  How do you think this problem will be solved?  What do you think will happen next?

• find a good breaking point in the story to ask your child to retell

what he or she has read.

After reading

• Encourage your child to use his or her own words to retell the story using the correct order of events.
• ask questions that help your child relate to the story:

Who was your favorite character? Why?  How is this character like you?  What did you already know about this subject?  What new things did you learn about this subject?  How is this subject similar to something else you have learned? What questions do you still have about this subject?

How can parents help in Math?

• Encourage your child to draw pictures and use objects to act out the problem whenever possible.
• Encourage your child to estimate the answer first and think about a reasonable “ball park” before beginning the actual math work.
• Let your child be creative in the solving of a problem- traditional algorithms aren’t always the best way.  Encourage them to understand the problem, not just find the right answer.  They should be able to explain what they did to solve the problem and why.
• Find opportunities to solve math problems together in your every day lives (cooking, shopping, money, measuring, etc.)
• Practice basic math facts- while memorizing “flash card facts” isn’t a requirement, having a bank of knowledge can help make multi-step problems much more manageable.

How can parents help in Science?

• Ask your child to tell you about what they are studying in school regularly.
• Review your child’s Science Notebook and ask him/her to explain what their entries mean.
• Review science vocabulary- there are many important terms that are essential for students to know.
• Discuss news broadcasts and articles that are science related.  Help your child see that science doesn’t just happen in the classroom, it is constantly happening all around us.