Good afternoon and Happy Friday!
I cannot believe March is now over ! The time is just flying by! We have been hard at work all week in Room 15. Students are putting their final touches on their scripts for their Early Settlements projects, I hope to share the links to view their commercials next week, just need to get a few more recorded! Students did a nice job illustrating their settlements and writing quick scripts to try to entice other colonists to join them in their new settlement. We move on to the 13 original colonies next! In the Spring, we will be visiting the Bunker Hill Monument and USS Constitution to tie in our studies of the American Revolution! Looking forward to this fun day - a big thank you to Mrs. Luuko who arranged this trip for us - with the government shut down it was not as easy this year! In Science, we are studying the water throughout the world. We are taking a look at the amount of salt water vs fresh water and the distribution of water on Earth. By the end of our study students should be able to describe and graph the amounts of salt water and fresh water in various reservoirs and to provide evidence about the distribution of water on Earth. We modeled this with a 2 liter bottle and a 50 mL cup to really stress that most of the water is salt, and scientists are continuing to find ways to desalinate in order to provide fresh water to those in need. Be sure to ask your child about the % of water on Earth that is salt vs fresh. I think they were pretty amazed as we built graphs of this information together. We also talked about sources of fresh water: polar ice caps, ground water and surface water from wetlands, ponds and streams. On Monday, April 29th, the watershed program is returning to Cole School. This takes place in the gym, and we need parent volunteers to help man the different stations. Each class has been asked to find 4 volunteers who can be in the gym from 9am - 11:30am. This is always a great day as students rotate through stations and learn about conservation of water, runoff and its impacts on the environment etc. If you are available, please let me know as soon as possible! Thank you in advance for your help with this! In Reading, we have finished up our March Madness picture book study. Students really seem to have enjoyed this! As the month went on, they seemed to get more and more comfortable talking about the plot, conflict and theme! We are compiling results of the 5th grade votes and will share our top titles with students on Monday. Next week students will be choosing a project to do on one of the books! Stay tuned for more details. We have been looking at character traits in our independent reading as well as discussing different characters from our read aloud Front Desk. Be sure to ask your child what they think about Mia, Hank and Mr. Yao. How are these characters different? Do they have any similarities? Students are working to back up their thoughts with evidence from the text. So if they say Mia is kind, ask them, how does she show kindness - see if they can give you a specific detail! We had a special guest reader in today - Mrs. Burns shared another principal read aloud! Be sure to check out our photo gallery for some pictures. I think it is so important for kids to see adults reading and enjoying books and I really appreciate having Mrs. Burns taking the time to be with our class (and she always chooses great books!) In Math, this week we worked on dividing unit fractions. We practiced whole numbers divided by unit fraction and unit fractions divided by a whole and how the models would look for each. Using word problems we worked to gain a deeper understanding of how these algorithms are modeled. For example if you have 6 apples and want to share 1/2 an apple with as many friends as possible, how many apples would you have? Students draw 6 circles (or squares) and then divide in half and count the parts. This is different from, we have 1/2 a cake left after the party and wanted to share it with 6 people. How much of the cake would each person get. Here they would draw a model showing 1/2 and then split that into sixths showing each person would get 1/12 of the cake. Students have been doing a nice job with this. They also are learning the algorithm for dividing fractions - so if you hear them say - Keep, Change, Flip - ask them to explain it to you! We will be reviewing multiplication and division early next week and having an assessment mid week before moving on to DECIMALS! Next week we will be starting our unit on Figurative Language. We will be discussing similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia and my favorite, IDIOMS! The week of April 8th will be Idiom Week in Room 15. Students will be choosing an idiom and writing the literal meaning and the figurative meaning, drawing pictures of both. On Friday, April 12th students will come to school with their finished project and a prop or costume to show their Idiom. This is always a great day! Many, many examples will be given next week to help them make their choice. Very specific directions and a rubric will come home on Monday after we have discussed this project as a class! I cannot wait to see their creativity! Lastly, I can't believe it is coming down to our last few months together, but it is! With the Spring, we have lots of great activities planned. We have the Museum of Science coming Monday afternoon April 22nd sharing their program on Electromagnetism. Please plan to join us if you can from 2-3pm in the gym. On Monday, April 29th is the watershed program, again please let me know if you can volunteer! Field trips are as follows - Please let me know if you are available to chaperone any of these, I try to give everyone a chance to join us, so let me know which ones work and I will let you know so you can plan your schedule accordingly.
And be sure to mark your calendars for our fifth grade celebration on Thursday, June 13th. This event is for parents only, no siblings, grandparents etc. Thank you all for your continued support - looking forward to discussing your child's progress at our conference! I have attached the conference sign up form to the email today! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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Happy Friday everyone!
Another busy week which started with a super community meeting hosted by our kindergarten friends. They helped Cole School say thank you to our wonderful bus drivers and crossing guard who help keep us safe each and every day! Nice job! Students have been busy this week illustrating the landscape of either Roanoke, Jamestown or Plymouth. Their illustration will serve as the background as they create an avatar in Tellagami and write a 90-second commercial to try to entice early settlers to come to their colonies. We are hoping to get scripts written and all avatars and audio recorded next week and then we can share with everyone! I have been impressed with their attention to detail on their drawings! We worked hard this week with the ACE strategy, practicing writing a response where we compare two different excerpts as well as writing a response from another point of view. Students are doing a nice job going back into their excerpt to find evidence to support their writing, I have been pleased with their progress. We still need to work on transitions and organizing our paragraphs to keep key details together so our stories flow more smoothly, but we are getting there! This will continue to be a focus, so don't be surprised to see an ACE graphic organizer show up at home soon! Next week we will be reading an excerpt from Caddie Woodlawn and writing about her character traits. Students will need to describe Caddie with three adjectives and find evidence in the story to support these traits. We have been using google classroom and google documents which allows students more practice with keyboarding and how we can comment and edit within google docs (something they will do a great deal next year!). We also had some great discussions during our literature circles this week! I had students begging to finish their discussions as they wanted to get back to reading their books - needless to say I was thrilled to hear them excited and making predictions about what might happen next! In Math, we continue our work with fractions, this week working on multiplying mixed fractions and showing how we can break problems apart to model them! Students are really gaining confidence making mixed fractions into improper and then simplifying answers. Some are even enjoying the challenge of trying to cross-cancel before they multiply! Next week we will be starting to work on division in fractions. Our standards in fifth grade have us focused only on taking a whole number and dividing by a unit fraction, or taking a unit fraction and dividing by a whole. We will be spending time this week modeling how each is different and continue our focus on figuring out which operation to use with different word problems. We are also doing more work with mulit-select type problems (where there is more than 1 right answer). I have found when students are taking computer-based tests and the question tells them to select all the correct answers, many choose one even if there are 2 or 3 correct answers. So we know they understand the math, but they are not reading the direction and reading ALL the answers to see if others may be correct. This is definitely challenging them, but something I will continue to focus on with the help of Mrs. Louchheim and Ms. Pagnani! I love using our math menus as I am able to really differentiate the specific question types different students are struggling with. They are all working on the same concepts, but within their menus I am able to give them some practice on weaker areas. Great effort by all and I love that so many students are taking advantage of the Tuesday morning math sessions! Don't forget next Thursday we will start Fifth grade 24 Club! Ms. Pagnani and I will host this and are looking forward to working on order of operations while having some fun! I was so proud of all the students from Cole who took part in the Kangaroo Math club, but most especially those from our class that came every week and put their best effort forward! Great job!! We will be starting to look at Weather Patterns and the Water Cycle next week. You may hear a few songs sung as we learn some different ways to remember the cycle! This is always a fun unit as kids always love to know what causes blizzards, tornadoes and crazy storms. I am just hoping we are on the other side of winter and can now look forward to enjoying more fun in the sun! Enjoy the weekend! Thanks as always for your support! Be sure to check out the photo gallery for some updates as well! Cheers! Maura IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER Thursday, March 28 - Early Release Professional Development Day Friday, March 29 - Report Cards home and PTO PICNIC BINGO!! Thursday, April 4 - All town Choral Concert 7:00PM Top 'O the Afternoon to everyone!
I cannot believe it is already MID March! The time is flying by! What an incredible week we had in Room 15. We started the week with the Amazing Artist, Rob Surette reminding us all to Dare Greatly and Shine Brightly!! What an absolutely awe-inspiring program - kids were completely mesmerized! Following that amazing kick off to our Monday, we quickly headed back to our room to get ready to Skype with author Dusti Bowling. The students enjoyed asking her questions about The Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, and got a sneak peek into her sequel which is due out in September. They asked some awesome questions and Ms. Bowling commented on the details that they were remembering! She has offered to send me autograph book plates for anyone pre-ordering the book - Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus and some other goodies!. (It can be ordered on Amazon or Barnes & Noble). I have heard from many of you, but if anyone else is thinking about ordering, if you could let me know by Friday, March 22nd so I can get the list to Dusti so we can get the book plates and some other "goodies" from her before the end of the year! Later that day during Tech class, Mr. Tinker had students working with robotics! Talk about an amazing day!! We are so lucky to have such a generous PTO and amazing tech teacher in Mr. Tinker! This week we focused our Science work on reviewing for our assessment. Students definitely rose to the challenge! They took an online exam and a printed portion where they showed me their knowledge of moon phases and planet order. We are trying to get them using computer based assessments as much as possible to build their comfort level before MCAS and to ready them for Middle School. Assessments are in their Friday folders for you to review, sign and return on Monday! In reading, students are doing a nice job in their book discussion groups. Today some realized their questions maybe needed a little more "meat". What could they ask their partner that they could really dig into as far as the characters, plot or theme! Looking forward to even better discussions next week! We are also working hard on using the ACE strategy. This week we went step by step and used our document camera to peer edit some of our introductory statements and initial paragraphs. Next week we will finish the evidence portion and summary and then move to trying an open response using Google classroom so kids get more practice reading excerpts online and answering both multiple choice and essays online. We spent time talking about answer elimination strategies as well. Reading the multiple choice and eliminating answers we know are not right then going back to look for details int he excerpt to help us find the right answer. Students are doing well with this so far and I am excited to see how they will do on an independent task next week! In Math we have really been focusing on getting students to build a connection between a word problem, the correct operation to use and the model that would appropriately show the equation. Students have learned that drawing a model of 6 x 1/2 is different than 1/2 x (of) 6 and 1/2 x 1/6. They love using FlipGrid - so we used that to see if we could all come up with a word problem to show 4 x 1/2 today. Some examples were: I gave 4 of my friends a candy bar at recess. After recess they had each eaten 1/2 of their bar. How many candy bars were eaten in all? The model they drew would be much different than "I had 4 candy bars and gave 1/2 to my friends". By having student write out the problem, record their explanation and focus on using math language we were able to clarify some confusion. This focus on conceptual understanding will be something we build on as we move next week to multiplying mixed fractions x fraction and use models to show these as well! I have been VERY proud of their perseverance with these difficult concepts. Tuesday morning math group is a great time for kids to come in (8:15-8:45am) to build confidence ! All are welcome! Thanks for all you do to continually support our classroom! Enjoy St. Patrick's Day! Cheer! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Good afternoon and Happy Friday all!
Even with our shortened week due to the snow pounding we received Monday morning, Room 15 remained focused and made great progress this week. We are very much looking forward to seeing Artist Rob Surette on Monday at 9:30 in the gym and hope many parents can attend as well. Later on Monday we will Skype with author, Dusti Bowling - I am not sure who is more excited about this, me or the kids! In Math this week we have been working on multiplying fractions by a whole and a whole by a fraction. We spent a lot of time modeling the difference between a problem that shows 6 x 1/2 versus a problem that is 1/2 of 6. Students have been doing a nice job with this. Next week we will be heading into multiplication of a fraction by a fraction. I have been very pleased with the effort shown as we move into these more difficult concepts! We love having Ms. Pagnani in with us for three afternoons now as well. She helps to remind us to use our math language when explaining answers and is a great resource for our classroom! Over the weekend - see if you can have your child explain the difference, or create a word problem that shows 8 x 1/2 and then 1/2 of 8. Ask them how many wholes they would draw for each model to keep them focused! We had a great time at Literacy Night! Mrs. Louchheim read Rot, The Cutest Potato in the World and actually painted 3 potatoes as samples of the "runner up". Students voted on this and had lots of fun doing so. We used this book to again go over the story elements of Setting, Characters, Plot, Conflict and Theme. This is a great book about being proud of yourself and not worrying about what other people think. We are finished with Week One of MARCH MADNESS! We are reading a picture book a day and peeling it apart to focus on these story elements. Students read about overcoming obstacles, looking for goodness in everything, treating others as they want to be treated and building communities. Each Friday we use a Google Form to vote on our favorite book. At the end of March we will compile the votes for the whole fifth grade and work on a culminating project. These books have all been chosen for their themes as well as for their diverse authors and subject matter! You can see pictures of the books in our photo gallery! Be sure to ask your child about their favorites! We are also continuing with our class read aloud Front Desk about a Chinese immigrant family's struggles as they try to survive in California with a boss who does not treat them with any dignity or respect. Great conversations have been spurred! Students are also really getting into their literature partner books. Today was our first discussion day and was great to hear them saying "Let's read more next week, it's getting really good!" and comments like this! Be sure to ask your child about the book they are discussing with their partners! Next week we will be starting to focus on study skills. We will be digging deep into the strategy called ACE . (Answer, Cite, Explain). Mrs. Louchheim and I will be walking students through a sample question with both multiple choice and open response questions. Reminding students to eliminate answers they know are incorrect and to use the ACE BEFORE they write any responses. You will start to see some of these writing assignments coming home. We will get them organized and started in school and they will be finishing up at home. We will also take a look at some sample responses to help students realize what is truly needed for a complete answer. We have some excerpts from books students are familiar with to help them feel comfortable as we begin. Then we will move to some new topics to be sure they can use all strategies independently. Our goal through this work is get them confident with the strategies, but also to build stamina ! We have loved having parents volunteering to come in and listen to us read. I really believe students have been working harder to acknowledge different punctuation when they read and are working on sounding out words etc. THANK YOU! In Science, we finished up our planet projects and next week will be in review mode for an assessment on The Earth, Sun and Moon. Study guides will go home on Monday and we will work through the study guide and also ways to make flash cards and notes to study for this test. Students have done a nice job throughout this unit with the many different activities we have done in class. Next week will be about reminding them about what they learned through the activities! So get ready to hear about how the length of their shadow changes depending on the time of day and some review of the Moon Phases! A busy week ahead for sure, so I hope everyone relaxes this weekend and comes ready for a great week! The "bug" has hit our classroom, so please be sure you all take care! We are starting to run low on Kleenex and paper towels so if any families could send some supplies in that would be very much appreciated! We will get through this winter of colds and feeling nasty!! Thanks for all you do to support our classroom! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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June 2019
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