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:
Happy Friday and Happy March everyone!
We had a great week back from vacation jumping into some review on Monday to refresh our brains of all the good work we were doing the week before vacation! We played some new math games to review converting mixed fractions to improper and improper to mixed. Students were also introduced to some other review games we will use to continue to review place value, geometry as well as factors & multiples as we continue our work in Fractions. New Math menus began on Wednesday with some new game choices and some specific review items for students individualized based on areas I have seen them needing a little extra boost. Students seem to like the menus - they like having a choice of what they are going to work on after we complete our mini lesson. We worked together on an Exemplar comparing how much cake 2 different kids ate. By using drawings as well as remembering how to add fractions with unlike denominators we worked our way through 2 different strategies using this 5 Step Problem Solving Process. I was really proud of the questions students were asking throughout our work - staying with it and gaining clarification where needed! We started our work with multiplication of whole numbers by fractions today and I was really pleased with student's work! Looking forward to diving in with this next week! We are excited to have Ms. Pagnani working with us three days a week during this part of our Fraction unit! We have started a new Read Aloud titled Front Desk. Be sure to ask your child what they think about the way Mr. Yao is treating Mia and her family. What do they think will happen to Mia's family? Will Mia and Jason become friends? This is a fabulous story about an immigrant family and the hardships they are faced with setting up a new life in California. They are already VERY into this story and I can't wait to see their reaction as Mia's family faces some new challenges! We had exciting news this week as well! Author of The Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, Dusti Bowling, respondedto a post our class tweeted and offered to read the first two chapters of the sequel to this books. I wish I had captured the students reaction when I read them her response to our tweet - it was priceless! Stay tuned as we will be setting up a date with Dusti to Skype with her ! Such a powerful message to our students that this author would offer her time to keep their enthusiasm for reading going! We finished reading Number the Stars just before vacation and have doing some writing work around this novel. Students were asked to write about their favorite character, choosing the character traits they thought best described their character. We are working on a a strategy called A.C.E - Answer, Cite, Explain. We also are working on writing from a character's point of view. We read an excerpt from the book when the family was traveling to Uncle Henrik's house and students have been asked to write about the train ride from the point of view of Ellen Rosen or Kirsti Johansen. This type of writing is often challenging for many, so it will be a focus over the next few weeks. In writing, we continue to work on gathering evidence for our argument essays. Students have been reading some different articles and watching some short videos, gathering pieces of evidence that would support serving chocolate milk in school as well as evidence against. Good argument essays are able to state their point of view and also point out what the other side might say and refute it. Students are already getting excited about "their" side of the argument! In Science, we are working on a Solar System Project. Students are gathering facts about each of the planets and building a model which shows the correct order of the planets with their orbits and the correct placement of the Asteroid belt. They are very engaged in this project, hoping to finish this up next week then begin our review of our Earth's Systems to get ready for an assessment! In Social Studies, students read about the settlement of Plymouth and gained further insight into the first Thanksgiving. Many were unaware it was actually 3 days long and didn't realize how important Massasoit was to the success of the Plymouth colony. We will be starting a project next week on the first settlements. Students will choose Roanoke, Jamestown or Plymouth and will use a program called Telagami to create an avatar, and will record a message about their chosen colony and illustrate what this colony looks like. I'm looking forward to their creativity! It was a busy day in Room 15 for Read Across America Day! We had our second Book Tasting today! Be sure to check out our pictures! Students were able to "taste" numerous books and will be partner reading a book. Partners will decide on their book and will work together to set reading goals to get the book read by the end of March. We will be working on creating good discussion questions and really digging into the books chosen! These book tasting always leave me smiling as I see students choosing books they may never have thought of! Check out our photo gallery for some pictures! We also had lots of "characters" in our class today and spent some time reading Dr. Seuss books with our Little Buddies ! Thanks to Mrs. Ryan's class for inviting us up for some reading fun to end our day! As always, thank you for all of the support you provide your children at home and our classroom each and every day! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember: Tuesday, March 5th 8:15am - Extra Math Help Room 15 Wednesday, March 6th 7:30pm PTO Meeting Thursday, March 7th 8:15AM Kangaroo Math 6:30 - 8:00pm Family Literacy Night Sunday, March 10th Daylight Savings - Move Clocks Ahead! Monday, March 11th 9:30 - Rob Surette Presentation - come see this wonderful presentation! Good afternoon!
We started the week with a wonderful community meeting reminding us about how simple gestures of kindness can make a huge difference in our community. We worked hard all week to catch each other and those at Cole School doing kind deeds - it was great to recognize so many! The NHS Peer leaders returned to talked with us about Direct and Indirect Peer Pressure. Students role-played some different situations to help them realize how peer pressure can get them into some tough situations! It was great to have them with us this year! We had an excellent trip to the Museum of Science on Wednesday, visiting the Planetarium and then having some time to explore the rest of the museum. Students were able to make many connections to the curriculum as the show talked about the moon phases. order of planets, and constellations. The Museum will be visiting us at Cole School later this spring to review some concepts of Electricity and Magnetism. We are so fortunate to have the Cole School PTO providing this wonderful enrichment for us! The class was very excited all week as they prepared for the Variety Show last night. It was so great to see so many of them living our School Motto by daring greatly and shining brightly! Be sure to check out the pictures in our photo gallery! So proud of all who participated! We also worked hard on our compliment hearts for Valentine's Day. It was so nice to watch them reading all of their compliments yesterday afternoon. They were excited to create them as necklaces to wear home and share with family! In Math, we continued our work with Adding and Subtraction Fractions. Working hard to find common denominators! We also continue to work to make sure all improper fractions are simplified to mixed. We will be continuing our review of these concepts as we move to multiplication and division of fractions after February vacation. We have also been working with Line Plots. Analyzing data and discussing what these types of graphs can tell us. This will also remain a focus for us after break. We have used FlipGrid a bit to show what we know about different math processes. It is great for students to practice explaining using math terms! I look forward to sharing more of these with you soon! In Science, we looked at the patterns in the sky, focusing on 5 major constellations by building a model in our classroom. Students connected their learnings about the Earth revolving on its axis to why the constellations seem to be moving. We have been working hard to analyze the different patterns caused by the Earth's rotation - the seasons, our shadows etc. Students have been asking some great questions ! In Social Studies, after break we will be comparing the first 3 settlements; Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth. We are getting ready to dig into the early colonies comparing the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies and how geography played a part in their growth. This is always the start of some great conversations and I can't wait to get going!! In Reading, students were on the edge of their seats this week with two novels we have been working with; The Honest Truth and Number the Stars. Thursday, you could have heard a pin drop in our classroom as we finished The Honest Truth, students were begging to finish this story and find out what happened to Mark and his friend Jessie and his trusted dog Beau. Be sure to ask them about this story! In Number the Stars, we are learning about the bravery of AnneMarie Johansen and her family. Ask your child what they thought about AnneMarie and her confrontation with the German Soldiers! They are begging me to tell them what we are reading next, but I told them I would tell them after break as I had a few good books in mind. I love to hear their enthusiasm to know what's coming next! We will be doing another book tasting when we return. This time, students will be working with a partner and will create a timeline for getting their book read and discussed together! I can't wait to see what they think about our next tasting! Thanks as always for your support! It was great to see so many students at the Variety show cheering on their classmates! Love our community! Have a wonderful break! I cannot believe we celebrated 100 days together this week! We are over half way done ! So proud of their progress and looking forward to so much more as we finish strong! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember: Friday February 15 - February break begins Monday, February 25th - School Reopens Tuesday, February 26th - Ambassadors to Cradles to Crayons Thursday, February 28th - Early Release - Elementary Professional Development Friday, March 1 - Read Across America Day - Dress up as your Favorite Character from a book! Good afternoon
We started the week with a wonderful Connections get together, reading Tomie dePaola's The Popcorn Book and then challenging our teams to create a container for the popcorn. Today, our class took this challenge to the next level - who could build the container with the smallest volume?! It was awesome to see them thinking through what they had learned about Volume to strategize their container. Discussions were had whether to go higher or longer and how that would impact the total volume of length x width x height. We learned a great deal listening to each other and are looking forward to our next challenge! In Math we continue working hard with fractions. This topic is many times the most challenging to students as there are so many different strategies to remember; making equivalent fractions, simplifying, finding least common multiples and greatest common factors, how to add unlike denominators, mixed and improper etc. Students have been really working hard to understand the concepts and when to use specific strategies. We spent some extra time on converting mixed to improper and improper to mixed as we will need to be really strong with this as we get ready for Multiplication and Division of Fractions after February break. We love the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) site. Students spent time during our computer lab time this week creating improper fractions and looking at the mixed fraction models that we could build from the improper! The site also gave them a look how decimals and percents were related. Students have links to many of these activities within google classroom, but the one that works with mixed and improper fractions can be found using this link . www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/Fraction-Models/ Next week we will be reviewing more with adding/subtracting with unlike denominators and what we need to do when we need to regroup with mixed fractions. Line plots have also been a part of our discussion over the past few days. We have been creating line plots of different class data and discussing what we find out from the data. Next week we will continue our work with line plots but will be using some fractions on the data as well! On Wednesday of next week we will be heading to the Museum of Science and attending a program about space and constellations in the Planetarium. Students will need to bring a bagged lunch (no glass please and peanut free) . They will be able to have a snack on the bus and then we will eat after attending the planetarium program. Students should NOT bring any money with them as we will not visit the gift shop or be buying any food. Buses will leave Cole School promptly at 9am to be sure we arrive on time for the Planetarium, so if you are driving your child to school, please be sure they are here on time on Wednesday! THANK YOU! This should be a fabulous day of learning for all especially since we will have just been talking about the Moon phases, constellations and rotation of the Earth! Students will also have time to explore the rest of the museum with their chaperone. Next week we also have the Cole School Talent Show which is always a great night of fun. Recently there have been a few issues with some unkind words being said at recess about certain acts etc. We have had classroom discussions about the importance of supporting each and every performer. All students involved are DARING GREATLY and SHINING BRIGHTLY and we need to remember to always use kind words, no one act is better than another - we all are talented and should celebrate the uniqueness in each of us! I know I am looking forward to seeing lots of talented students on stage next Thursday and celebrating every performance! In Social Studies we have begun talking about Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth. Ask your child what they remember about the Lost Colony of Roanoke. They were all very intrigued by what could have happened! Today we dug into Jamestown and lots of students remembered the story of Pocahontas, but didn't realize that Tobacco became the cash crop for the Jamestown settlers who had originally come looking for gold! Next week we are on to Plymouth and then will be doing a mini project on these 3 colonies! This week we also have started using FLIPGRID in our classroom. I am able to post a video question to the students and they have to respond to me in a video that is 90 seconds or less. I asked them all for feedback on their Math Menus and their responses were honest and thoughtful. They shared with me what they like about the menus, what they would like to see more of and areas that are continuing to challenge them. Seeing and hearing them take ownership of their learning is just wonderful! As I get better with this wonderful tool, I will send some links home to you so you can see how your child responds to these prompts. We also used it to talk about kindness. Next week is World Kindness Week so I had them watch a short video called "Color Your World with Kindness" www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwelE8yyY0U I then asked them to tell me how THEY could help color the world with kindness. Once again, I loved their honesty, but also loved seeing how they viewed each other's ideas and gave positive comments to classmates. Can't wait to share more of this wonderful tool with you all! In Reading, we are really into our new read aloud The Honest Truth, about a boy who is sick and decides to run away from home to hike Mt Rainier. Kids are on the edge of their seats begging for me to read more each day. We are discussing questions like "What are you wondering about Mark?" "Do you think Jessie will tell his secret? Would you tell the secret?" Ask your child about this book, I am sure you will get some very interesting thoughts! We are also continuing our work with Number the Stars. The Johansens have just taken Ellen on a train ride to Uncle Henrik's house. What do students think will happen at the house by the shore? Again, they are making some great predictions and really starting to relate to the characters! Strong discussions in room 15 for sure!! In writing we have begun to take a look at writing a persuasive essay. This week our focus has been to read 3 articles about whether or not chocolate milk should be served in school. Students have been taking notes when we find facts to support chocolate milk and also when we find facts that tell us we should not serve chocolate milk. Next week, they will be picking the topic they will have to argue out of a hat - half the class will be in support of chocolate milk at school, and the other half will have to convince us why we should not have chocolate milk in school. Students are learning the importance of knowing both sides of an argument. We will have some fun with this writing for sure! After we model this structure and discuss what goes well and what we could do better, students will then be given a choice of a few different topics and will write their own persuasive essay. We will look forward to sharing our progress with you! Please be sure to check out our photo gallery as lots of pictures of guest readers and students at work were added last week and this week! Valentine's Day is next Thursday - Students should be working on their compliment hearts. All hearts should be cut out and returned to school by Wednesday, February 13th so we can distribute on Valentine's Day. We will be making compliment necklaces for all students as they exchange these wonderfully positive notes to each other next Thursday! A class list was sent home today and is also attached to this email. Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Hi everyone!
Well this week we certainly had a great deal going on in Room 15! We truly celebrated World Read Aloud Day by having lots of parents, family members and community members come in and read their favorite stories to us. Please be sure to check out our photo gallery to see pictures of these guest readers! Thank you to all who could come in - we certainly showed the students in Room 15 that we all love READING! If reading to our class is something you would like to do but your schedule just didn't allow right now, just shoot me an email and we can try to schedule a convenient time! Our Student Government Representative came back from the meeting this week and challenged our class to do acts of kindness as we recognize National World Kindness Day which is celebrated on February 17th. As a class, we are challenging each other to look for ways to spread kindness over the next two weeks as we prepare for World Kindness Day! A giant heart is outside each classroom at Cole and as students share kindness, they will write what they did and their name so we can recognize all of the good we are doing as a school community! Hopefully these acts of kindness will include helping out at home as well! Our goal is to spread smiles as much as we can! In Science, we continue to look at the Earth's Systems and how we can find patterns in many of our systems. This week our focus was on shadows. We discovered why our shadows point to the west when the sun comes up in the east and then reverses as the sun sets. We also looked at the length of our shadows. Ask your child about our Science Investigation where we used protractors with a flashlight and a mini lego person to be able to see how the sun effects not only the direction of our shadows but the size! Next week we will be digging deeper into some of the constellation and try to understand why they SEEM to be moving in the sky. We are talking a great deal about the Earth's rotation on its axis and how this affects so many different patterns! Students are building graphs with their data so we can analyze these patterns! In writing students wrote a personal narrative this week. We wanted to see how they did now that we had taken a break for a bit. I was happy to see them remembering to start with a catchy hook and also taking time to use strong vocabulary and dialogue. We will be moving into persuasive essays, which I can tell already is going to be lots of fun with this class. We will initially look at the question "Should schools allow chocolate milk at lunch?" and then will move into students choosing for a few different topics. In reading, we continue our work with Non Fiction Signposts. We love pointing out Extreme or Absolute Language and this week talked about Numbers and Stats. Why do authors put specific numbers in different articles. What purpose do they serve? Are we stopping to ask ourselves if the numbers are important? Do they help us visualize the story better? Great discussions on this topic, looking forward to this continuing! We also started Lois Lowry's novel Number the Stars, about two families and their friendship during Nazi occupation. We are only three chapters in, but the connections to other books and "I wonder" statements coming from our class have been wonderful! Ask your child what they think about AnneMarie? What do they think is going to happen to the Rosens and the Johansens? In Math we have done a nice job with equivalent fractions and are gaining confidence with Improper and mixed fractions. Next week we move to adding and subtracting fractions with UNLIKE denominators. Extra Math help remains on Tuesday mornings 8:15-8:45 where we will remain focused on helping students with fractions for the next few sessions! Students have been doing a nice job with their math menus. These are differentiated menus given to students with practice work in fluency, problem solving and previous topics. Students choose different activities when they complete the work due as part of our daily mini lessons. It has been great to see students realizing areas where they need the most practice and choosing to do those activities first. Mrs. Louchheim and I are able to pull small groups or work individually if necessary to break tasks down when students need it. By spiraling and reviewing constantly students are gaining confidence in areas where they perhaps were a little shaky, while at the same time continuing to learn new topics. We have a new game in our classroom called EQUATE - it is basically Scrabble but with MATH. Students have really enjoyed this as one of the activities on their menus, but I have also seen students playing at indoor recess. Another game they love is 24, which is a game reviewing order of operations. Ask your child about this one! I will be offering a before school 24 group later this spring on Thursdays - stay tuned for details! Looking forward to another great week of learning next week! Thank you all for your support of our classroom! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember
Good afternoon
For a short week, we certainly accomplished a great deal in Room 15. We started the week with a Totally Awesome Tuesday, where we wrote notes to teachers, administrators and special helpers in our school to remind them how totally awesome they are. Students did a great job being specific about what they appreciated, and the recipients were blown away. It's always great to start the week by making people in our community smile! We had ended last week filling each other's buckets so it only made sense we looked beyond Room 15 to kick our week off in a positive way! This week our focus in math has been on equivalent fractions and we also began to take a look at factors and multiples as we get ready to add and subtract fractions. Students used fraction bars to build many different equivalent fractions and then were able to "play" with an online tool to create equivalent fractions. Here is the link to the site - ask your child to build a few equivalent fractions for you! It's a great site! apps.mathlearningcenter.org/fractions/ We talked about why it's important we learn about equivalent fractions. Students came up with some great examples such as baking - what would they do if a recipe called for 1/2 cup of chocolate bits, but they only had a 1/4 cup for measuring? How many pieces would they need to cut a cake into if they were sharing with 3 friends? What if 4 more friends came? Could they split the pieces evenly? Lots of different scenarios came up and kids were asking great questions! In reading, we continued our work with Non-Fiction Signposts. This week we took a look at Extreme or Absolute Language. When an author may exaggerate to call attention to something or to present a specific point of view. We had great discussions around this. As we continue to look at Non Fiction pieces we will be on the look out for this signpost! We finished up our last historical fiction literature circle. A group of students read The War That Saved My Life. It was so great to hear them summarize their thoughts today and hear them referring to AHA Moments, Again and Again and Contrasts and Contradictions! They are really noticing the fiction signposts and asking probing questions during their discussion groups! Next week we will be starting Number the Stars as a whole class read and discussion book. We will continue to work on comprehension strategies as we learn about a family fleeing from Nazi Occupation. This story is always a favorite each year and I look forward to connections students will make to novels we have already shared. We are also deep into The Year of Billy Miller. Students are enjoying this read aloud which is a bit lighter than the previous few we have read, but great discussions continue. We look forward to having lots of guests in next week during National Read Aloud week in Room 15. It is always great to see kids reaction to the many guest readers we have and to have them listen to the stories you choose to share. If you would like to join in the fun click the link below and sign up for a time that works for your schedule! goo.gl/forms/t22aDnMQz1mXCFTH2 In Science we have been looking at how the Earth's rotation on its axis and it's tilt cause night and day and how it differs all over the world. Through this discussion we have been working on some graphing skills as we looked at and compared hours of daylight in Chicago, Sydney and Nairobi. Ask your child why Nairobi has 12 hours of day and night all year long! In Social Studies, students worked hard all week putting finishing touches on their Explorer trading cards. I will take lots of pictures over the next few days and upload over the weekend to our photo gallery - so be sure to check back! Students finished up their Informative Writing assignments as well this week. They worked in Google Docs to add text features such as headings, bolded words, pictures and captions to bring their articles to life. Next week we will be writing another narrative to check in to be sure we didn't forget any of the many skills we learned earlier this year. Students will have a chance to write about another "small moment". We will then switch gears and began our work with the persuasive essay! This is always a fun unit! As you can see, we remain busy in Room 15, accomplishing much, but also remembering how important our community is! World kindness week is coming up and we will definitely celebrate this in our class and will be sharing our kindesses at home as well !! Thank you for all of the continued support! Be sure to ask your child about equivalent fractions, or about their explorer (they should be able to tell you 2 interesting facts), or about why our days are shorter in the winter than the summer! Have a great weekend! Maura IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBERMonday - Friday - Guest readers in Room 15 ! Monday - Friday - Canned Food drive - bring in canned goods for food pantry Monday - January 28 - Peer Educators from NHS visit Thursday - January 31 - Early Release Day - Professional Development Friday - February 1 - WORLD READ ALOUD DAY Good afternoon!
Where does the time go, I cannot believe we are already half way through January! Another busy week in Room 15. As mentioned last week, we finished our class read aloud, so this week I did things a little different and had students vote on our next read aloud. I didn't show them the title or book, but instead read a description of the book and some critiques of the 4 books we would choose from. Students then voted using a google form in Google classroom ! It was a fun way to see what type of story they would like next! We chose The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes. So far we are enjoying it a great deal. It is a much "lighter" story than our last book, but students are already seeing some different messages shared in this book! Billy is a second grader who can be quite humorous at times! We left off with Billy and His friend Ned building dioramas. Be sure to ask your child why they think Billy's father is upset? Make a prediction about what you think will happen next. This week we also began working on NonFiction Signposts. We looked at contrasts and contradictions and read an article about a boy who was a banana picker since the age of 8. We had a great discussion about all of the things the article made us stop and wonder about.. Why was the boy working at 8 years old? Why was he allowed to work 8 hour days? Why didn't he go to school longer? Why didn't he wear safety equipment. Next week we will look at Extreme and Absolute Language and how it can also make us wonder! This week students have been hard at work on a rough draft of an Explorer trading card. Using a tool called Epic on their iPads as well as other research sites, students have been researching to find interesting facts about the explorer they were assigned. They have done a nice job getting their rough drafts done. On Tuesday I will be giving them a piece of white card stock for their final product which is due next Friday. They have a rubric to review as they put their final product together - I am looking for color and attention to detail and cannot wait to see the final results. In Science we continue working on the Earth's Systems. We made models of the moon and used flashlights so we could see how the rotation shows us the different phases. Nice job on our moon journals and don't forget Lunar Eclipse this weekend! Ask your child why a Lunar Eclipse is sometimes called a Blood Moon! We explored this with Mystery Science today! We also learned about time zones and how the rotation of the earth on its axis causes night and day. Next week we will dig in further and look at shadows and the seasons! Lots of great thoughts as we dig into these concepts. In Math we finished up our work with triangles and geometry. Quizzes are in Friday folders for your review. Today we kicked off FRACTIONS! We started today just sharing what we already know and then explored fractions using geometric pieces. A hexagon was equal to 1 whole and then using other pattern blocks and dice we rolled to use triangles (1/6), parallelograms (1/3) and trapezoids (1/2) to make wholes. KIds did a nice job "trading" equivalent fractions. Fractions are often a challenging topic for students. Tuesday morning sessions for the next few weeks we will be spending extra time focused on Fractions. All are welcome! Today we also discussed the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We looked at some strong vocabulary such as segregation, bias, prejudice, riots, protests and doctorate. It was a great afternoon full of rich discussions. Hoping you all have a wonderful long weekend and stay safe and warm in the snow! Best Maura Important Dates to Remember Tuesday, January 22 - Extra Math Help 8:15 - 8:45 am Friday, January 25th - Explorer Trading Cards Due Monday, January 28th - NHS Peer educators visit our class Monday January 28th - Friday, February 1 - National Read Aloud Week celebrated in Room 15 - use this link to sign up for a time to come and read to us! goo.gl/forms/Qb6CSTOVxL8MMvEu1 |
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June 2019
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