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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June 2019
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