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We had a fun and festive week in Room 15! We started the week with a great Connections meeting. We read Measuring Penny by Loreen Leedy and then did an activity where students measured numerous items in the classroom using non standard units of measure. It was lots of fun to measure with unifix cubes, post its, paperclips etc and then talk about why standard units of measure are so important. We followed it up today with our class measuring some items again and discussing what we learned. Then on Tuesday we made Rudolph with our little Buddies and read using EPIC on our IPADs - 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' - such a fun time together! The students were outstanding in their production of Christmas on Candy Cane Lane, this again reminded us the importance of accepting the differences among us! I was so proud of each and every student and hope their performance made you as merry as it did for me! We kept going with the 12 Days of Holiday Spirit and incorporated some "snowballs" in our classroom this week as we explored volume some more. Students were challenged to build different rectangular prisms with different volumes. They then solved a problem when a box truck dumped 48 marshmallows and they needed to pack 4 boxes again. They were challenged as they had to use all the cubes, but no box could have the same dimensions! They did a great job and had some fun along the way! We tried out a new game called "YAPPER" thanks to Mrs. Burns! She recently went to a math conference and was introduced to this activity and share it with staff at our curriculum meeting. It is basically like playing the $100,000 pyramid with one student giving clues and the other trying to guess the word. We used Math Vocabulary and it was AMAZING to listen to how kids tried to get their partners to say the term.. Lots of laughs and learning with this game. It will definitely be played during review periods for the rest of the year. Highly engaging and I can quickly assess where we have gaps in understanding! Our literature circles saw two groups finish their books - Riding Freedom and George Washington's Socks ! I loved hearing students saying it was their favorite book and making connections to different strategies we talked about in writing. For example, one student mentioned that Riding Freedom had a circular ending because Charlotte named one of her new foals Freedom like the horse she had at the beginning of the book. They also did a great job talking about different characters and how they changed throughout their novels. Students that are reading The War That Saved My Life came across a very mean teacher in their last few chapters. Ask your child what they thought about the way the teacher treated Jamie. Their discussion in school about this was just amazing. I can't wait for this group to finish this book, as it is an amazing novel. I already have a few of them asking about a sequel!! We finished up The Santa Clauses today, students will be bringing home packets to share the haikus with you. This was a great activity this whole month. We had some holiday fun each day, but also continued looking at analyzing poetry and figurative language. In Science we continue looking at the Earth's systems and started talking about gravity. After break we will be looking at why there is day and night and why our shadows change. We will be spending time keeping moon journals as we learn about the phases of the moon. Lots of fun activities await our return to school in January! A heartfelt thank you to everyone for my overly generous Christmas gifts. I love each and everything and really am overwhelmed by your generosity. I truly love being in our classroom with your children each and every day and have loved watching them grow and cannot wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for all of us! Enjoy the holidays with family and friends and hopefully some rest and relaxation! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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The holiday spirit is definitely alive and well in Cole School and in Room 15!! I have loved watching how the students add tinsel to their outfits, pull out the polka dot socks etc to show some holiday spirit! It's been a lot of fun enjoying this together as a class. Thursday we had the Norwell Middle School Band and Chorus come and perform their Christmas show for us. It was great to see many Cole School Alumni (as well as Room 15 alumni) showing off their talents. We had lots of fun joining in the sing-a-long at the end as well! As a class, we are DEFINITELY enjoying the holiday songs! We are so excited to share our musical "Christmas on Candy Cane Lane" with you on Tuesday evening! We will be performing it for the school Tuesday afternoon, so please be sure all costumes are in school by Monday so we don't have any panicked kiddos on Tuesday! We have red and green duct tape ready for our red and green candy canes - just need their white shirts to prep! Any students in the band may wear their costume for the band concert. We will be clearing the chairs right after the band performs and then the 5th grade musical will begin. I personally think there is just something special about kids performing around the holidays, we will definitely be spreading more holiday cheer! Thank you to the many parents that came in today to create some holiday crafts! We certainly had a great deal of fun! I will finish posting pictures tonight, so be sure to check back to our photo gallery later this weekend for more picture updates! I appreciate all of the time and effort put in by all of you to support your children each and every day. It always amazes me to see how quickly I can get volunteers to come in and spend time, especially this time of year! I hope you all enjoyed your time as much as we did! Even though we have been enjoying the holiday spirit, we are still working hard through the curriculum. This week we started digging deeper into many different text features. Looking at how the different text features help us find information as we read. Students have also enjoyed using the App EPIC to read some non-fiction. As a class we took a look at a few books about explorers, discussing how photographs, bolded words, and maps help to give us a better picture of what the Early European Explorers encountered in their journeys. We will be taking a deep dive into the explorers when we return from Christmas break! We are continuing our work with figurative language as well as we make our way through The Santa Clauses.. Yesterday we discussed how personification was used to describe Mother Nature and earlier in the week we took a look at some similes and metaphors. Students will have a packet of all 25 haikus to share with you over break. Each day we read the haiku (each student has access on their iPad), then we analyze to see if any figurative language was used. At the same time we are also continuing our journey around the world. We have our passports and have stopped in Spain, Australia, Germany and France to read about how Christmas is celebrated. We are discussing the similarities and differences and also writing some facts learned in our "passports". This has been a fun way to stay focused on using text based evidence. Students did a great job in their book discussion groups this week. Two groups will be finishing their books by next Thursday and the third group will finish when we come back from break (their book was a bit longer). I have been very impressed with the way they are now able to challenge each other's thinking and do so in a respectful way. They are making connections not only to characters, but to other books they have read and are discussing many of the strategies we have used so far this year. I have to say, book group days are one of my favorite days of the week! Students from each group have already asked me if there is a sequel to the book they are reading.... what more could I ask for?! In Math, we began our exploration of volume and rectangular prisms. We began the week with a review of perimeter and area and discussed situations where we would need to measure perimeter vs area. We talked about the need to be very careful with labels as we move to measurement for example, units , square units and now cubed units for Volume. We used unit cubes to build lots of different rectangular prisms and showed how the volume could stay the same even though the dimensions may change. Students looked at nets and were then given some time to explore on NCTM's Illumination site. We looked at building the prisms by cube, row, and/or layer and then also started to have some fun with a puzzle about which nets would fold into a cube. Building cubes - to find volume - click here www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/Cubes/ Which nets form cubes? - click here www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/Cube-Nets/ Good afternoon!
Another busy week in Room 15! The holiday season is definitely in the air but we continue to work hard to make progress in all areas. Our focus this week was finishing up our work with division of whole numbers. Assessments were given today after a few days of review. I was so impressed by the number of students who came in Thursday morning before school for some extra support, taking responsibility for their learning! Next week we will begin our work on Volume and will be working with new "Math Menus". A big thank you to Ms. Pagnani for always exposing me to new ways to teach math in order to engage more students! I have seen a huge shift in confidence since the beginning of the year and want to continue that trend. Working together with Ms. Pagnani and Mrs. Louchheim we have built some differentiated math menus that will give students some new choices during math centers. It is my hope that by giving more choice in math centers, as we do in readers and writers workship, that we will have students really digging into math! Stay tuned for more details! In reading and writing, we continued working on non fiction text features and our compare/contrast essay of the theme in Wonder and Out of My Mind. We had wonderful discussions about the characters and how their actions taught us about kindness. We also finished reading The Sign of the Beaver and were able to compare it to the movie version. It was wonderful to hear students listing the many ways the book and movie were different and why they liked the book better than the movie. I heard things like "the book painted a better picture, it had more action than the movie". Students will now be writing an essay about one of the main characters. They will be choosing a few character traits and providing evidence of how the characters exhibited these traits in the book. Be sure to ask your child what they thought about Attean or Matt. They DEFINITELY have some pretty strong opinions about them! Our literature circles are going strong, some very lively discussions there as well. Students are asking to read MORE chapters each week as they really dig into their books. Next week we will be gathering in our discussion groups on Thursday instead of Friday as we have some holiday festivities planned on Friday afternoon! As we continue looking at great literature, we are starting to look more deeply at figurative language. I found a really cute book that is helping to expose students to similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration and irony all through HAIKUs. The Santa Clauses, Short Poems from the North Pole, is a book containing 25 haiku poems written by Santa himself telling students what is going on day by day as December 25th draws near. Each day students use their IPADs to access an electronic copy of this book on Epic (an app on their IPAD) and I read the hard cover with them. We discuss the haiku and analyze the poem noting if there is any figurative language being used. Check out some of our original Haikus in our photo gallery! We have some poets among us! They initially were challenged by the 5 syllable - 7 syllable - 5 syllable pattern, but as you will see, they became very creative!! We are also working on our own Holiday passports as we read and look for text evidence on holidays around the world. Students have "visited" Spain and Germany so far - please ask them about some of the facts they have learned about the way these different countries celebrate Christmas! In Social Studies, we have begun to read about Early European exploration, looking at the tools and some of the reasons why the early explorers decided to take their long voyages. After Christmas we will be taking a deeper dive into some of the famous Early European Explorers. In Science, Earth's Systems are our focus and we will be learning how to make scientific claims with evidence before we jump into gravity and its impact on the Solar System. The Twelve Days of Holiday Spirit have begun at Cole School, and our school is definitely showing its spirit! Today was Rudolph Day and there were red noses everywhere! Next week we have holiday hat day on Monday and Candy Cane Day on Tuesday. I will continue to send reminders through the remind app for all! Remember, this should be a fun activity - students can choose which days if any that they want to be involved! So far it has been lots of fun! I hope you have all marked your calendar for Tuesday, December 18th for our Christmas Concert and 5th grade Musical! Fifth graders will be presenting "Christmas on Candy Cane Lane", a musical about appreciating differences! Students have been so engaged in the practices, I am sure this will be a fun holiday experience for all! Mrs. Walsh came in again this week to finish up our work on Conflict Management. We learned about the importance of listening to both sides of a story and coming up with a compromise both sides will agree to! The playground has been a bit more competitive than what we would like to see recently. The boys have been a bit too physical on the soccer field and basketball court. We have had discussions of their need to remember this is recess, not the World Cup or the NBA and that they need to include EVERYONE! Any help you could provide reminding them of this at home would be great as well! As always, thanks for your continued support. Next Friday, December 14th we have a group of parents who have volunteered to come in and make holiday crafts with our class. This is always a fun afternoon and students are really looking forward to it. Thank you to our Room Parents, Mrs. Gibbons and Mrs. Concheri for organizing this fun! Don't forget the Winter Fair is TOMORROW at 9am. This is always a wonderful fair and all of the money raised goes to enrichment for all students at Cole! Some good questions to ask your child:
Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Card Writing/Bag Decorating Event after school |
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June 2019
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