Good afternoon!
I cannot believe today is the last day of November! Time is flying by and we continue to be very busy in Room 15! We came back from our Thanksgiving break very excited as we had earned our cozy movie day for our teamwork - we worked hard to be better at transitions and to be listening more intently when instructions are being given! Together, we watched Wonder and have followed up with some wonderful discussions about the many similarities and differences between this wonderful story about kindness and Out of My Mind, the novel we read to start our year together. I have been very impressed with the many connections students are making between the stories. I have been really pushing them to look beyond the basics of things like the main character in one was a boy and the other was a girl, to looking at how the characters actions impacted the story line. We talked about character traits and those that could be used to describe characters in each book, how these characters are alike and how they may have been different. We will be focused on how to write better compare/contrast essays in the next few weeks. Great questions to ask them would be "How do you think Jack Will from Wonder and Rose from Out of My Mind were alike and how were they different? What about Julian and Claire? Which characters do you think changed the most in each novel and why?" Both books send a clear message to "Always be Kinder than Necessary". As we move into the holiday season this will be a theme that will remain constant in our classroom! In Science we introduced our next unit Earth's Systems with a look at how scientists make scale models for size and distances when looking at objects in the Solar System. We modeled the Earth, Moon and Sun in our hallway, using a (121m) 70 foot piece of string to show the SUN's distance from the earth is one of the reasons why it looks the same size as the Moon when we see it in the sky. Although the SUN is much bigger, the distance impacts how we see it. We are beginning our work on how to build a scientific argument and will continue that work next week. Our focus in this unit will be building an argument that the apparent brightness of the sun and stars is due to their relative distances from the Earth. We will also be looking at gravitational pull and diving into Moon phases and the patterns that impact our seasons, shadows, day and night. This is always a fun unit and I am looking forward to enjoying it with your child! We are having some fun learning about the many different text features authors use when writing non fiction. We took a scavenger hunt and built a google slide show with a partner. Each group needed to find an example of many different text features in different sources from our classroom. They had to take a picture of the text feature and upload it and name the source in their google slides. We will be putting together a classroom resource to share in our google classroom as a reference as we begin to work on informational writing. Check out the pictures in our photo gallery and ask your child how text features help an author present information in interesting ways! In Math, we continue our work with partial quotients in division. Students are doing a nice job SLOWING down and checking their computation . They have the strategy pretty solid, now it's getting those number facts in check! We will be assessing on Division next Friday and then starting our work in Volume. A study guide will come home on Monday. Keep working on those math facts! In Reading, we finished The Sign of the Beaver, it was great to see may students making connections to the Native American Tribe research they had just completed in Social Studies. I think the best part of reading this book as a class was when I read the last paragraph and immediately students started asking "Is there another book?" "Wait, what happens next?" I told them this could be their chance! They could write the sequel! Today we started our historical fiction literature circles. It was so great to see and hear the excitement students already have for the stories they are reading! The book tasting definitely got them ready and raring to go - I see another tasting in our future for sure!! Be sure to ask your child about their novel. Here are some ideas:
Since it is the holiday season, we will be doing some research on how holidays are celebrated all over the world by reading some short articles and looking for evidence as we do so. Kids will be given a "passport" where they will keep track of some key details they find out as we visit each country. Stay tune for more information! A note from Mrs. Luuko - Fifth Grade parents are being asked to bake for the winter fair next weekend. Drop off times are December 7 in the morning and afternoon. Please email Ann Luuko at [email protected] with any questions. All treats must be NUT free. All money raised at this wonderful event goes towards our enrichment so any and all help would be greatly appreciated! IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER
Have a wonderful weekend and don't forget to check out our photo gallery! ~Cheers Maura
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Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
Just a quick note this week... This week, although short, was a great reminder to me of all I have to be thankful for! Watching students come in to review Science in order to just feel more confident about their knowledge base and taking responsibility for their learning is wonderful! So proud of their efforts! Yesterday though, I was reminded why I made my way back to the classroom. As I transformed our classroom into our "Bookworm Bistro", I was hopeful students would respond to this activity and really dig into some new titles. Just seeing their smiles as they walked into our "Bistro", found their reservation and table number and then as they literally devoured the books put in front of them - sheer joy for me! At first they were looking at me like I lost my mind, but as they entered and found their place and waited to be "served" discussions began! They saw the titles they would be "tasting" on our SmartBoard and already the excitement began to build. As they filled out their "menu" it was great to see them really looking for the author's hook and being honest about which books really appealed to them! We spent about 12-15 per book, looking at the cover, reading the first few pages and then discussing with our tables, lots of opinions shared! The past part of the experience for me was last night when I sat at home and read their reflections. Many noted "I would never have chosen these titles, but now I want to read at least 2 (or 3) of them! " What more could a teacher ask for? I am excited to get started with our next round of literature circles after our break and will look forward to re-opening our "Bistro" again for more tastings in the future! Please check out the photo gallery for some pictures of your children "tasting" these novels! Have a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving break! Best, Maura Important Dates to remember:
Good afternoon!
Room 15 was very busy this week! We completed and publsished our personal narratives and enjoyed sharing with friends and family during our Celebration of Writing on Wednesday! .We appreciate all of the feedback given to the students on their hardwork ! They were very proud to show you where they had started and how far they had come! A huge thank you to Mrs. Fuller. our literacy coordinator, for helping to provide me with different mentor texts to teach different lessons during our narrative unit! When students see an author's craft in their writing, it helps them to make the connections to their own! Our editing took on a whole new level!! Now we will be shifting gears from personal narratives to informational writing. Students will become an "expert" on something and share their expertise through their writing, this is usually a really fun piece! We finished up our first Reading Unit on THEME this week as well. We have few more culminating activities to finish up before Thanksgiving break, but we have learned a great deal about looking for the theme or lesson in the novels we read. Great discussions were had as students discussed the different books they were reading and the themes they had found. We also discussed books we have read as a class and shared that books can have more than one theme. These were great conversations! Students have been comparing and contrasting themes in different books as we make connections to our writing as well! We will be moving to Non-Fiction after Thanksgiving break where we will read lots of different articles, paying attention to the different text features as we read. Students will learn why authors use pictures, captions, bolded words, charts, graphs, maps etc as they write their nonfiction pieces. We will also be kicking off our next round of literature circles. On Tuesday, we will be having a "book tasting" in Room 15. Students will make their way to four different tables where they will be asked to review 4 different historical fiction novels. They will look at the cover, read the back cover and any other reviews or information contained within the inside few pages. After reviewing they will jot down some notes about their thoughts on each book. Once we have made our way and tasted all four books, students will be asked to make a reflection on the books. They will indicate which books they might be interested in reading. All students will choose at least 2 of the titles and I'll create groups based on their choices. Giving them some choice always helps to engage them in the process and helps them focus on trying to get as much out of each "table reservation" as they can. Books will be distributed after Thanksgiving break and we will begin digging in! Our focus will be on character traits and how character problems often help readers figure out the theme! In Math we have started working with division. We started by looking at division using multiples of 10, 100, 1000s. Students find the basic fact and use what they learned during multiplication to help them figure out the appropriate place value. We have also looked at using rounding and compatible numbers to make sure our answers make sense. Next week we will be diving in to Partial Quotients. This is different from the basic algorithm that many of us know, but it is a great process to make sure the students are understanding the process of division and that their number sense is solid. We will spending time on the NCTM Illuminations site (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) to explore in their "quotient cafe". www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/The-Quotient-Cafe/ Students have always enjoyed this site. Students will at first be guided through choosing a dinosaur, penguin etc to enjoy bagels, waffles or donuts. They are taken through step-by-step how to use facts they know to help divide the food as evenly as possible. Once the process is understood, students will build their own problems and work with partners in the cafe! Be sure to ask them about this next week (they haven't seen it yet!) This is yet another resource, Ms. Pagnani shared with me last year and I LOVE it! (and so did the kids!). In Science, we worked hard all week preparing for our assessment on Matter. We reviewed our study guide and with the help of Mrs. Louchheim, gave students lots of different examples of the different processes we covered in this unit. We played a fun Jeopardy game to help us review as well. Overall, I was very pleased with the results of the assessment, which came home in your child's Friday folder yesterday. But, I know a few students didn't do as well as they had hoped and realized as we went through the test together, they didn't read all of the answers before making a choice, or just didn't answer completely. As mentioned in my email Friday, I am changing my typical Extra Math Help on Tuesday to be a little Extra SCIENCE. Any student that wants to re-take the assessment will be given an a new test on Tuesday (not the same test, but covering the same material). Grades will be averaged. This is not a requirement, but an option to any who felt they could have done better. I had a few tell me they knew they should have studied more, or that after reviewing all of the informationm again, they have a better understanding. They have all been working so hard and I don't want anyone to get down on themselves. This was a difficult and long test, but their effort and perseverance was awesome! Let me know if your child will be coming on Tuesday! In Social Studies, our flip books on our Native American tribes are really coming alive! Lots of great facts have been shared and now paragraphs are being written and books compiled. It has also been great to see and hear kids making connections to our novel The Sign of the Beaver. Next week is a short week and the beginning of a crazy time of year for everyone! Hopefully you found the red flyer on the 12 Days of Holiday Spirit in your child's folder. Cole School is full of spirit all of the time, butlet's really have some fun with this holiday challenge this year! Thank you to all of the parents who have already come in for conferences. It has been great to have so many students come along, I hope that you feel both you and your child gained some insight into what's going well and what we are going to be focused on until we meet again! It has been great to see kids take ownership of the areas they want to focus and together we will keep them accountable to these goals! Looking forward to meeting with the rest of you over the next two weeks! I will post a short newsletter next Tuesday evening in order to share some pictures from our book tasting and any pertinent news you need before Thanksgiving Break! Enjoy the weekend and as always, thank you for all of your support! ~ Maura IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER!
Good evening!
A short week, but one jam packed with lots of learning! We started the week with a wonderful community meeting led by our fourth graders. What a great job they did honoring the many veterans who were with us at Cole and those that couldn't be with us. Great job! This week was also the start of some spelling and vocabulary work. Students will now have weekly packets that will included some rule based spelling words, vocabulary builders as well as some academic vocabulary. It is important students begin to generalize many of the academic terms that are used throughout our content. For example, during math recently a question asked them to compute the answer of 54 x 6, students knew how to do the multiplication, but panicked when they saw the word compute. By exposing them to different academic vocabulary, I hope to take that anxiousness away! In writing we have been working really hard editing our stories. Our focus this week was on conclusions/endings. We spent a few days listening and discussing the endings to many different picture books. We talked about the many different ways authors can choose to end a narrative. Students were then asked to review their stories and see if they could come up with two new endings. We shared their creativity and then students decided if they wanted to use one of their new endings or stay with their original. Great job by all! We then did a wonderful activity called "Glow and Grow". I saw this tweeted by Ms. Keough at the Vinal School and LOVED the idea. Ask your child what Glow and Grow was and how their writing may have changed after this activity. You will see more about this at our writing celebration this WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14th at 8:15AM. I also posted some pictures in our classroom photo gallery. We are looking forward to sharing our published pieces on Wednesday, but are especially proud to show you how far we have come! In Reading we continue our focus on theme. This week we used some music to help students make the connection. We listened and looked at the lyrics to "This is Me" from The Greatest Showman and also listened and looked at the lyric for the song "Brave". By really digging into the lyrics students realized quickly the message both songs were sending - this was a fun activity for all! We continue to read The Sign of the Beaver, with students typically asking me to read "one more chapter" as we find each chapter leading us deeper and deeper into a wonderful story of survival and friendship. In Social Studies we have started our work on our Flip Books on Native American Tribes. Students are using books from our library and online resources to take notes about the specific tribe they chose. We will then take those notes and start to compile paragraphs and then the flip book! I have been really impressed with their excitement and effort on this project so far! Can't wait to see the final products. As mentioned in my email earlier this week, we will do the majority of the research at school (a few students mentioned wanting to continue at home) and then next week you may see pieces coming home for them to work on paragraphs etc. If you have any questions on this project, please let me know. We are finishing up Matter and will have a test next THURSDAY. (I changed it from Wednesday due to the short week). Students have a study guide that you will see come home Tuesday and Wednesday. They have done a great job on all of the labs, now we need to see them connect all of this information! We plan to review with a game of Jeopardy on Wednesday and be ready to rock and roll with our test on Thursday! In Math - WOW! I was so impressed with the effort shown on the recent math test. They are in today's Friday folders for you to review. After review, please sign the post it and send it all back. I will keep in a portfolio for the year. I want to take a moment to congratulate all of the students who have been coming in for extra math help on Tuesday mornings. Their confidence is building and their mindsets are changing! They are not so afraid of math anymore and are using strategies to check their work - it is truly wonderful to see the growth and I thank all of the parents who make the effort to get them here on Tuesday mornings. All are welcome and we will still have our group Tuesday the 14th - we will be starting division next week so this session will be a little jump start! As you can see, never a dull moment in Room 15. This class is full of energy and enthusiasm for learn and I love being their teacher and watching the grow. Lots to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season! Have a great long weekend! Maura IMPORTANT DATES Friday, November 9th No School - Professional Development Day Monday, November 12th No School - Veteran's Day Observed Tuesday, November 13th Extra Math Help 8:15 - 8:45am - all are welcome . - it's also WORLD KINDNESS DAY! Wednesday, November 14th WRITING CELEBRATION! 8:15-8:45AM - Wear Blue for Diabetes Awareness Ambassadors Club will meet Wednesday at noon Thursday, November 15th National Parent Involvement Day Wednesday, November 21st Early Release - Thanksgiving Break Thursday, November 22nd Thanksgiving! Enjoy time with friends and family!! Hi everyone!
This weekend we turn our clocks back an hour, so we gain an hour of sleep ! I think this is a gift from the Red Sox for all of those late night games! We had another busy and productive week in Room 15! In Math we wrapped up Topic 3 - Multiplication of Whole Numbers with some work with word problems and also learned to multiply 4 digits by 2 digits as well as 3 digits by 3 digits! Students have been exposed to three different strategies to help them solve problems and it's been great to see them choosing to use two each time, using the second strategy as a check! Yes, this takes a little more time for them, but they have realized it helps them find simple computation errors they may have missed without trying the second strategy. They have also made "friends" with graph paper, realizing how much it helps them stay organized as we move to working with larger numbers. A big thank you to Ms. Pagnani for sharing lots of new math games with us to help us become more solid with estimation and multiplying larger numbers! Study guides have been given out and we will review on Monday and Tuesday for our Assessment on Wednesday. From here we will move onto Division of whole numbers! In Reading we continue to dive into theme and how character reactions within novels can help us figure out themes! We also continue to look for signposts as we read and jot down questions we have or things that perhaps surprise us or make us wonder. As a class we are reading The Sign of the Beaver a great novel about a young boy and his adventures as he meets up with members of the Beaver tribe. This novel ties in nicely with our Social Studies work right now as we are studying the Native American Cultural Regions. Students will be picking a tribe to research and will create a flip book that shows their knowledge of the food, clothing, shelter, location and artifacts/games of each tribe. More information will be sent home about this project next week. We have been editing like professionals this past week learning how to find "invigorating verbs" to replace some of the old faithfuls (said, ran, got, went), create new leads to hook our readers and are now focused on tying everything together with strong conclusions. Students are working with Google Docs which is great practice for them. They will receive comments online and suggestions to add/edit for grammar and content from both a peer as well as myself. We are looking forward to celebrating our hard work with you on WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14th at 8:20am. Please mark your calendars to stop by and see our original drafts and all the work we have done to bring our stories to publication! We have finished up our work on Matter in Science and will be preparing for an assessment next Thursday. Students have created Google Slides for all of the vocabulary in the chapter and we will be reviewing key concepts throughout next week to prepare them. A study guide will go home on Monday. As you can see, we have been very busy! We did find the time to have some fun while we were learning as well - especially on Halloween when we solved a Halloween Exemplar to keep our problem solving skills in check! We also did a fun activity as we estimated the number of skittles needed to fill a large Mason Jar. Students have been doing a nice job challenging each other with estimates and their justifications. It's great to see them using math language as they explain their reasoning! Next week we start parent conferences! Thanks to those of you that have chosen a spot. I look forward to meeting with everyone to discuss your child's progress and remind you that I would love it if your child joined in on our conference as we talk about goals for the year. If you have not yet chosen a spot - please use the link below. https://goo.gl/forms/j0knUrw2nwso9Diy2 Thank you, as always, for supporting our classroom of learners! Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Questions to start a discussion:
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June 2019
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