Good morning!
I cannot believe the last day is here! As I wait for the class to arrive, I think back to our first day together - they have all grown so much! Together, as a team, we have watch them grow not only as better students but as better people - their kindness and empathy for others warms my heart and I know they will make a mark on our world! This group of kids is a very special group and I hope they keep in touch as they accomplish the many goals they set (and reach) in the future! Thank you for the privilege of teaching your children! They are amazing people! Have a great summer! Maura
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Happy Friday all!
What an exciting week we have had! We finished up a math assessment to see what we have learned all year and maybe remind us of a few things we should continue reviewing over the summer! We also really got our engineering brains going with our Egg Drop Challenge! It was so great to see the randomly selected groups work together towards a common goal. We learned a lot during our first round and are now re-engineering as part of the STEM process to come up with a new design for our drop next Wednesday. A big thank you to Mr. Thayer for climbing up onto the roof to really bring this experience to life for our students! In Social Studies, this week we talked a great about what it meant to be a Loyalist vs a Patriot. We read about the feelings each side had and then discussed the happenings at the Second Continental Congress. Students now have an understanding of why John Hancock signed his name "loud and proud"! We also had some great discussions about how outnumbered the colonists were in the American Revolution, but how their emotions helped to keep them strong in their fight for Independence. Looking forward to more great conversation next week! Today we had our last visit with our Connections Groups and read The Most Magnificent Thing. Students were then asked to design their own " Most Magnificent Thing" - we definitely have some designers and engineers among us! In Reading, we finished our fantasy unit with students looking at character growth in their independent novels as well as creating flip grid book talks to help get others to want to read this genre. We also worked with Mrs. Fuller to put together our summer reading plans. These will be in student's report card envelopes at the end of the year! We continue our reading of Avi's The Fighting Ground which follows along with our study of the American Revolution! Jonathan was captured by the Hessians this week, ask your child about this book! We are also having some fun reading about Frederick and all of his crazy friends in Lions & Liars by Kate Beasley. Frederick unknowingly ends up at a disciplinary camp for boys and some crazy adventures occur. This is a fun, light-hearted book to end our year together! I hope you all had a wonderful time at the Fifth Grade Celebration. The committee put together an AMAZING event to celebrate each and every one of our Cole School Fifth graders. As Mrs. Burns mentioned, this class is a very kind, caring and empathetic group of students and my wish for them all is that they strong in these characteristics as they move to Middle School. I know I will miss their kind hearts each and every day! Enjoy the weekend! George's Island for us on Monday RAIN OR SHINE! The buses are LEAVING Cole at 9am sharp in order to be sure we are able to secure seats on the boat! Have a wonderful weekend! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday everyone!
What a busy week we had! We started the week performing our last band concert at Cole School and then spent a beautiful day walking the Cape Cod Canal. Congratulations to all of the honorable mentions in the essay contest and to our winner, Alex Otero who won the contest and has named next year's fitness program Y.E.T. - Your Exercise Tracking. Alex reminded us in his essay that when we are faced with something we think we cannot do, we need to add "yet" to our statement. "I can't do this yet!" and use this as motivation to accomplish new things! Students had a great time at Scusset Beach after their 3 mile fitness walk, always a special memory from Cole School. We continue to learn about the American Revolution, this week focusing on No Taxation Without Representation and what made colonists become either Loyalists or Patriots. As a class, we did a few simulations in order to get students to understand the frustrations of the colonists. Great conversations continue, especially as we make connections to The Fighting Ground by Avi. This novel is about a young boy who wanted to fight in the war even though he was too young and his parents did not want him in harms way. It is great to hear students discussing what they would have done and why, making connections like these really helps to bring history alive for all! In Science, we have begun work on my favorite stem challenge of the year - our EGG DROP CHALLENGE. Students were put in random teams and given a list of materials and a budget. They are working together to make a sketch and a list of materials needed to build a contraption that will protect an egg that is dropped from the roof of Cole School. Great creativity so far! I will be sharing videos of our contraptions next week - stay tuned!! On Thursday, we went to the Middle School for a fabulous tour ! We met with administration and guidance counselors to review some of the things to expect when we arrive at the Middle School. Then each class was taken on a tour of the building so we could see our 6th grade wing and also found the gym, cafeteria, music room and foreign language classrooms. Students asked some great questions and I do feel they are all feeling a bit more comfortable! Norwell Middle School did a fabulous job with students and, for me, it was great to see former students continuing to shine! Field Day is always a blast and this year did not disappoint. I was particularly proud listening to our fifth graders sing the National Anthem to kick off our day of fun! I took over 200 pictures so be sure to check out the photo gallery!! As a fun, year-end Read Aloud, we are reading Lions and Liars. Be sure to ask your child about Frederick and what they think will happen to him at camp as he pretends to be someone he is not. This book is very different from The Incredible Journey of Coyote Sunrise, but kids are enjoying the light hearted fun of a group of kids at summer camp. IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:
Maura Happy Friday!
After a beautiful Memorial Day weekend we started the week with a wonderful program about living with disabilities and overcoming obstacles. We loved reading Rescue & Jessica, as well as listening to all of the personal stories from Patrick and Jessica, Kids were amazed to hear about all of the training both Rescue AND Jessica had to go through before they could be a part of each others' lives, This was an awesome program for Cole School! In Math this week we have been focusing on working with coordinate planes. Graphing coordinates and finding mystery pictures as well as using coordinate points to give directions. Today we also worked through some numberless word problems. These problems help students visualize the problem as step by step, bits of information are shared for students to decide on correct operation and labels. This definitely challenged a few at first, but after practicibg a bit, they all did a nice job! We then had some time to play with some of the nbew math games we got fronm our Norwell Education Foundation Grant! Be sure to ask your child about our new games! We finished reading The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise, you could have heard a pin drop as we finished the final chapters and heard Coyote as she told us about her beautiful memory box. This is an amazing novel about acceptance, dealing with grief, and the power of love and kindness. Be sure to ask your child what they thought about Coyote driving the bus, what would they have done? Do they think Coyote aqnd Salvador will keep in touch, why? What was their favorite part of the book? As oiur final read aloud we are going to have some fun with Lions and Liars by Kate Beasley, stay tuned for details. We worked hard on our fitness essays this week and will find out at Scusset Beach on Tuesday if one of classmates wibs the essay contest and names the fitbess program next year, Please remember all chaperones need to be at Cole School by 9:15am so we can board the buses and leave Cole by 9:30am. Only chaperones riding the buses with us will be allowed with the group on the beach, Thanks for your understanding about this! In Social Studies we had some unbelievable discussions about slavery in the Americas. We discussed the Middle Passage and the awful treatment of many slaves as they arrived in the colonies. We also took a deeper look at the colony of Virginia, looking at Williamsburg in particular. Great discussions/debates began when students realized only white landowners who practiced at the Anglican Church had a say in the government. We are now beginning to look at how tension began to grow between the colonies and Great Britain. Along with our study of the American Revolution we will be reading The Fighting Ground, by AVI. We will have some class simulations about taxes in the colonies to really help students understand how colonists were feeling. This is always lots of fun! Next week is a busy week! Field Day is Friday - be sure to email Mr. Thornton [email protected] if you can help on this fun day. Students have voted and our class name is Reilly's Radical Roosters! Looking forward to this fun day! Have a wonderful weekend! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday everyone!
Students worked so hard at the beginning of the week, completing their Science MCAS with lots of great effort! You should all be very proud of their work! I appreciate all the notes of encouragement you shared with them to keep them focused and ready to go! On Thursday we had a wonderful time in Boston at the Bunker Hill Monument and touring the USS Constitution. Students took the challenge to climb all the stairs of the monument and then followed the Freedom Trail to the USS Constitution Museum. Later onboard the USS Constitution we were able to tour the actual ship and ask questions of the different soldiers present. We ended our day by learning about a sailor's life aboard this famous vessel! This was a great trip which ties perfectly to our curriculum as we begin digging into the causes and effects of the American Revolution which is always a fun time in class! On Friday, we had visitors from the Norwell Middle School come and talk with us about what to expect next year! This is always a great first step of our transition as students hear from other students ! The 6th grade leaders did a wonderful job helping to ease stress about this transition! We will look forward to our trip to the Middle School on June 6th when we will tour the building and meet the 6th grade team! Our fantasy book clubs met on Friday! Talk about excitement! Kids were really delving into characters and problems and making some predictions about what they thought might happen next. It is great to see and hear them get so excited about their chosen novels! We are continuing our work with The Thief of Always, many twists and turns as Harvey "escaped" the Holiday House. Be sure to ask your child what they think about Harvey's recent decisions! Students are also on the edges of their seats each day as we read our chapters from The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. Be sure to ask them to tell you about how Coyote helped out her friend Lester when he decided he no longer wanted to meet up with Tammy! This was a comical scene that they all enjoyed and some made great connections to it as well! I can tell you this, I am truly going to miss reading to this group every day - they are so engaged in each and every book we have read together this year! If you want some ideas for a good read aloud this summer let me know! In order to qualify for our Cape Cod Canal Fitness field trip, students are working on essays explaining what their favorite activity is and what benefits they gain from being active. They are also trying to name the fitness program next year. We began the brainstorming and organizing of our thoughts today. Students were reminded to be thinking about their name over the weekend as we would be writing our drafts on Monday to have them completed for Mr. Thornton on Wednesday! Permission slips for this field trip are in today's Friday folder. Please note, only chaperones that have been selected for this field trip are allowed to be with us. In Math, we were lucky to have Ms. Pagnani in on Friday to help us problem solve through a "3-Act Task". These are great activities to work through estimation and critical thinking. We cannot wait to do more with her this year! Also, the 5th grade team is excited to share the news that we were awarded a Norwell Education Foundation grant this year! We wrote a grant to expand our repertoire of Math Games! Lots of new games were ordered and are now being shared in each classroom. One that we have been using for a few months (but now have an extra copy of ) is Set, the visual perception game. There is also an online version that I put in google classroom for students to practice a daily challenge - you can access it here as well www.setgame.com/ There is also an online version of the game 24 which is also a class favorite! www.coolmathgames.com/0-make-24 Good afternoon and Happy Friday!
What a week! We worked hard at the beginning of the week reviewing the many different concepts and strategies we have used this year in Math. Students were ready and raring to go for the Math MCAS on Thursday and Friday! So very proud of their efforts! We will be spending some more time on measurement and graphing and solidifying concepts as we close out our year together! You should be very proud of their effort! In Reading, we continue in our Fantasy unit. Students had their first book discussions last Friday and are really reflecting on the power in their novels and how sometimes what may seem magical in the beginning of a story, can change as the story moves on. We are digging deep into our class read aloud of The Thief of Always to model how power changes and also how characters begin to realize and deal with different problems. I love hearing their discussions, as they are making connections and challenging each others predictions in this unit! We are also continuing our reading of The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. Students are seeing how Coyote is empathetic to her friend Salvador even though she is nervous about getting back to the park on time. Be sure to ask your child what they think will happen. Will Coyote make it on time? How will Rodeo react? What do they think will happen to Salvador and his mother? We are really diving into our unit on Animals and Ecosystems. Students used digital learning guides to finish their research on 6 different BIOMES. We then took a look at animal adaptations and did some simulations in class. Be sure to check out the photo gallery for pictures of these centers in action and ask your child what they learned about different footprints - how is an elephant's foot different than a frog's and why are they so different? How do they help the animal? How about beaks? How does the size of the beak change what the animal might eat? Let's not forget about hibernation and migration? Can you name two animals that hibernate and two that migrate? Vertebrate projects are due on Monday, a few have already come in and I am thrilled by their creativity and attention to detail! This week in our Friday folders - please find the following:
Thanks as always for your support! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Good afternoon!
Another crazy busy week in Room 15! We started the week with a reminder to be so thankful for our freedoms. The second grade students did a marvelous job singing and sharing poetry about Memorial Day at our community meeting! Be sure to take a moment to be thankful on May 27th! Later that day we had some fun reviewing polygon with Mr. Tinker - we programmed our new robots to pace out a square, rectangle and trapezoid based on clues given by Mr. Tinker. I think we have some future technology gurus in our class! In Math, we continue to work on decimals. We spent the beginning of the week reviewing how to divide decimals and ended with a review of decimals with all 4 operations! Good work by all! We will review the metric system next week in preparation for our Math MCAS on Thursday and Friday, May 16th and 17th. If you would like to send another note of encouragement in, please do so - this is such a great way for students to start the days of testing! In Reading, we are knee-deep in our fantasy unit. Tomorrow students will have their first discussion groups, I have loved listening to their connections so far and know they are really thinking about the setting and the power in their novels. They have been asked to think of which characters have the power, is it a good power or one used for evil. We continue to use The Thief of Always as our mentor text, I use this text to model this and then have students focus the strategy in their independent reading. We are also almost half-way through The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. Be sure to ask your child what they think about Coyote riding across country in a bus with a guy (her dad) named Rodeo. It is a heartwarming story with lots of twists and turns! In Science, we are becoming experts on all things Animals! This week we focused on Ecosystems and Biomes. We used a wonderful digital literacy program to research interesting facts about 6 different biomes and also shade in areas of the world where the different biomes are found. They have chosen their vertebrate and are researching classification and the ecosystems in which they live. Lots of great discussions as we talk about the differences in food chains and how predators and prey affect these chains. Next week our focus will be on what impacts an ecosystem, proud of their efforts! Next week we have the MATH MCAS on Thursday and Friday. Students have been working hard as we review all we have learned thus far! As always it will be important to have students well rested during the testing period - so there will not be any homework next week except to work on their Vertebrate project. Thank you as always for your constant support. Teacher Appreciation Week at Cole School was completely overwhelming, I feel so lucky to work in such a supportive environment! Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Good afternoon!
I know I have already sent emails home about this, but I am still beaming with pride at the effort shown by students during the MCAS! Two longs days of reading and responding, but they did great!! Rest up next week so we will be ready and raring for Math! In reading, we had our final book tasting of the year today. We "tasted" lots of fantasy titles and students responded to those they liked and would like to read with a partner. We will partner up on Monday and set some goals for our new novels. We are also reading The Thief of Always as our fantasy read aloud. We are together diving into the components of good fantasy novels, learning lots about tone and how it impacts setting. Students have lots of thoughts as to what they think might happen in this book - they are already on the edge of their seat waiting for what happens next! (I love this!) . We are discussing elements of fantasy and going beyond what we thought of as setting to really think about what is happening "around" the story. Great discussions so far! We are also continuing The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise, you should ask your child what they thought about Coyote legally changing her name! Many students were amazed about this! In Math this week, we continued our work with decimals - focused on multiplication and the movement of decimals. We are moving on to include division next week and will be focusing on reviewing graphing and measurement as well. Students have been doing a nice job with their menus, so they have been practicing concepts from the beginning of the year. This should help them feel more confident as we ready for the Math MCAS. Early morning extra help for math on Tuesdays is still going on as well - 8:15am on Tuesdays and all are welcome! In Science, we are deep into our study of animals. We started the week making models of our backbones and are now looking at life cycles and biomes. Check out the photo gallery to see us at work with our digital learning guides! Students will be getting a vertebrate project assigned next week - they will build a model of a vertebrate and tell about its life cycle and explain an ecosystem where it can be found. Stay tuned for details! Thanks for all of your support! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday everyone!
It was so great to see so many smiling faces Monday morning and to listen to the stories of the fun everyone had over April Vacation and on Easter! We started the week with a Connections group where we read Twenty-One Elephants by Phil Bildner and then were challenged to build a straw bridge that would hold the elephants (marbles). It's always great to see the old and the young working together to solve a problem. We ended our Monday with an incredible enrichment program about Electricity and Magnetism, from the Museum of Science. Students were able to see lots of examples of conductors and how magnets and electricity together form strong forces! Check out the pictures in our gallery! (THANK YOU PTO FOR SPONSORING!) In Math this week focused on reviewing Addition and Subtraction of Decimals. We looked at word problems, models and algorithms to be sure we would remember to line up our decimals when solving. We had some fun doing a SCOOT review! This is when cards with different problems are hung up around the room and students take a clipboard and scratch paper to solve each one. They have a grid to write their answers on and this one had a twist - they could use their IPADs to scan a QR code that would let them know if their answer was correct. Multi-step work problems were definitely the most challenging, as students needed to remember they sometimes needed to add and then subtract their total from a whole number. For example, Suzanne wanted to run 5 miles during the week. On Monday she ran 2.2 miles and on Wednesday she ran 1.67 miles. How many miles would she need to run on Saturday to hit her goal? Students did a nice job adding the 2.2 + 1.67 = 3.87, but then some tried to subtract 3.87 - 5 rather than 5.00 - 3.87. We will continue to review these types of problems to help them build confidence! Today we began to explore multiplying a decimal by a whole number and how to use estimation to help us! In Reading, we have been continuing our work looking for figurative language in our independent reading novels and also have been spending time working on reviewing strategies to use when answering open response questions. Finding evidence to support their thoughts is key and they have made nice progress in this area. We also began to read The Fighting Ground by Avi as our whole class novel. This is a wonderful story which connects with our studies of American History. Students have been doing a great job making predictions and backing up their predictions with specific details from the story. Today, we were able to spend some time looking at our wonderful March Madness projects! I was so impressed with the effort and enthusiasm put into their work! We had dioramas, flip grids, movie trailers, and game boards! Love the diversity and creativity! In Social Studies, students are researching some basic facts about one of the thirteen original colonies. They are creating a brochure about the founding of their colony, geography. food, major industries, recreation and other interesting facts. We will continue our work on these next week - this is an in school project! We will be doing lots of reading over the next two weeks about some causes of the tension between Britain and the colonies as we get ready to dive into the American Revolution. Students always love this part of the year as we talk about some of the major events in American History! In Science, we finished up our study of the Earth's Systems and are excited for our program on Monday about Watersheds. This will tie in perfectly to all that we have been studying about the water cycle, weathering, erosion and deposition. Thanks to the PTO for once again bringing in awesome programs for us! Thank you also to the parents who have volunteered to come in and help facilitate the different stations! Yesterday we started our deep dive into Animals and Ecosystems. Students had some fun classifying lots of picture cards of animals as we discussed how classification can help scientists. Today we looked at Vertebrates and Invertebrates. I was very impressed with the work students did in their Student Field Guides. We looked at the 5 classes of Vertebrates: Fish, Bird, Amphibian, Reptile and Mammal as well as the 6 classes of Invertebrates: Sponge, Cnidarian, Mollusk, Worm, Arthopod, Echinoderm. We looked at lots of pictures to see what characteristics each had and read some facts so we could be come resident "experts!" We will move on to Life Cycles as well as Animal Reproduction & Inheritance next week! So some questions you might want to ask your child:
Next week we have ELA MCAS on Tuesday and Wednesday. Students are ready for this, they just need to be confident and relax! We will not have homework next week, students should get a good night's sleep and have a hearty breakfast. Snacks should be as normal, students will keep them at their seat and I will have breaks during testing for them to eat, stretch and relax! Thanks as always for your support, it has been great meeting with you for conferences and I look forward to finishing the year with lots of learning and adventures with your child! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Good afternoon!
Happy Friday everyone! I cannot believe we are at April vacation! We have been working very hard in Room 15 to finish up some projects and set goals for our final semester together! In Science, we spent the last few weeks looking at our Earth's Systems from the layers of the atmosphere to the percent of salt water and fresh water on Earth. We created models for the three types of rocks: Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic and discussed how weathering, erosion and deposition impact how rocks are formed. We will be diving into weather systems and our changing landscape when we return and then dig into Ecosystems. In Math, we have begun our work with Decimals and place value. Our focus so far has been on adding and subtracting decimals and looking at rounding numbers up to the thousandths place. We will be picking up with this after break and then moving into multiplication and division of decimals, I was VERY pleased with student results on our recent Math and Science assessments. They are getting the hang of multi-select type questions and are adding details to their answers. Great progress! We finished reading Front Desk by Kelly Yang amidst a cheer in our classroom during the final chapter. Be sure to ask your child about this wonderful book. Mia and her family persevered through some amazing challenges and we all celebrated with her in the end. Dusti Bowling, author of Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus sent us a copy of a story that takes kids to the summer of Aven's life. This was a bridge story as we all await her next novel's release in September (Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus). We were lucky to have Mrs. Burns in a few weeks back and she did a book talk on The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. I had heard great things about this book, but she hooked me and that is our present read aloud. Students were begging me to read one more chapter yesterday, so it's safe to say it is a hit with them as well! We spent the afternoon on Wednesday coming up with a plan for our reading over break. We talked about how important it is not to lose our reading stamina! They all have a plan, let's help them continue their progress! In Social Studies, we are moving on to the original colonies. Students finished Tellagami projects about Jamestown, Roanoke or Plymouth. I hope to post them here soon, just waiting on one more to upload! I love this time of the year in Social Studies as we start to dig into the American Revolution and with our field trip to Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution, we will definitely make some great connections to our nation's history! Today was an awesome day where Room 15 really shined! They have been working so hard on Figurative Language posters and creating/presenting their idioms. We had so much fun with idioms and hopefully this project will be something they remember! Be sure to check out our photo gallery so you can see our projects - we had some butterflies in our stomach, ants in our pants as well as smartie pants and many, many other creative projects! So proud of their efforts! Enjoy the vacation week! We have lots of fun and learning coming our way as we head into MAY?? (How can that be!) Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
On Tuesday, May 28th, students in grades K-5 Cole School students will meet co-authors Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, a married couple who were both injured during the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. They will be joined by the star of their book and ASPCA Dog of the Year, RESCUE! Learn about the role of service dogs to help people with physical disabilities and the amazing things that people and dogs can accomplish together through hard work, perseverance, and partnership. The authors will read aloud, take questions and sign books for all attendees. You can even get Rescue’s“pawtograph” with your copy. If you are interested in purchasing a copy of the book, Rescue & Jessica, A Life-changing Friendship, please look for the order form that will be coming home with students on Monday, April 22nd. |
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June 2019
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