Hats off to all of the fifth graders for a wonderful Science Fair!!!
Students will now be concentrating on compiling their memoirs, which they will be publishing and sharing with their classmates.
The class is doing a great job utilizing their note-taking strategies as they learn more about the Slave Trade.
Important Dates:
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Since we are busily delving deeper into our social studies unit, memoir work, and wrapping up our novel groups I want to focus your attention on the slue of upcoming dates!
Important Dates:
Wednesday, May 2nd – Language Arts MAP testing – 9:30-10:30am
Friday, May 4th – Author Visit – CANCELLED
Sunday, May 6th – Science Fair Experiment Completed
Thursday, May 10th – Breakfast w/ Books – The View From Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg – 7:30-8:15am
Wednesday, May 16th – Science Fair – 6:30-7:30pm
Tuesday, May 22nd – 5th Grade Olympics (9:00-11:00am)
Wednesday, May 23rd – Fifth Grade trip to Marie Murphy
Thursday, May 24th – Rain date for Olympics
Friday, May 25th – Fifth Grade trip to the Shedd Aquarium
Monday, May 28th – No School
Friday, June 1st – 5th Grade Party – 12:00-2:45pm
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We have a lot going on this week!
Reading: Students are doing a great job keeping up with their novel groups. My novel group is reading From the Mixed-Up Filed of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and we meet from 10:30-11:10 each day. Each night the kids complete their reading, vocabulary work, and their small group job which helps to foster a very lively conversation about last night’s reading. These groups will continue until Friday May 4th.
Language Arts: This week we are focusing on vocabulary words from the cred family meaning to believe. Our grammar lessons are focusing on punctuation.
Writing: We will be wrapping up our writing this year with our Memoir Unit. The students will be rereading the writing they have done this year in order to come up with a theme for their memoirs. They will then be spending quite a bit of time writing their memories. I will be sharing a variety of memoirs with the students to show them the many options they have to construct their memoirs. This unit is going to be a lot of fun!
Science/Social Studies-We are wrapping up our science unit on Life Systems by publishing a class book on Invertebrates and Vertebrates. We will begin the editing process today. Today we will begin exploring the geography of Africa via our atlases to prepare for our final unit on the Slave Trade. The students will then focus on Mali and Ghana to better understand the culture of West Africa. They will be comparing and contrasting the two countries based on seven cultural aspects: music, religion, education, food, family, art, and traditions.
Important Dates:
Wednesday April 25th Math MAP testing
Wednesday May 2nd Reading MAP testing
Monday April 30th Book Blurbers due (free choice)
Monday May 7th Students begin working on their Science Fair display boards at
school (all experiments must be complete prior to this date)
Wednesday May 16th Science Fair
Friday May 25th Field Trip to the Shedd Aquarium 9:30-2:00
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Dear 5A,
I hope everyone had a restful break!
This week we are gearing up to complete our Poetry Anthology. It will include at least six original poems. Our Poetry Cafe is scheduled for April 13th from 1:30-2:45. The students will be performing their partner poem, a favorite from their collection, as well as a memorized poem from a published author. Today the students created goal sheets to help them stay on track and manage their time accordingly.
We will have a spelling test on Thursday along with a grammar quiz on irregular verbs.
Science Fair preparations are underway as the students finalize their project question. They will be handing in their green conference form on Thursday clearly stating the step by step process they will undertake to test their hypothesis. Once the conference forms are submitted we will be ready to move on to the student/teacher conferences the following week. The students will start their experiment at home once they have been approved in their teacher/student conference, which will be Friday April 13th.
Important Dates:
Thursday April 5th –GREEN conference form due
Friday April 6th –No School
Thursday April 12th —Breakfast with Books Esperanza Rising
Friday April 13th—Poetry Cafe 1:30-2:45 Parents Invited
$5.00 due for Science Fair boards
Wednesday April 25th Reading MAP test 9:30-10:30
Monday April 30th Bookblurbers Due—Free Choice
Wednesday May 2nd Math MAP test 9:30-10:30
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Dear 5A,
The students did a great job on their ISATs last week. Spring break will be a well deserved vacation!
Language Arts: We are embarking on our Poetry Unit this week. We are exploring poetry through song lyrics and reviewing the various types of poetry. At the end of the week the students will be introduced to our poetry project. It will include creating their own poems as well as a Poetry Slam which parents will be invited to on Friday, April 13h.
Social Studies: We are wrapping up our Dust Bowl Unit by having the students connect their understanding of the Dust Bowl to a current environmental issue. They are working in small groups to create a Public Service Announcement which they will share with their classmates at the end of the week.
Math: We have just begun Unit 6 which focuses on decimals on grids and number lines. By the end of this week students will have a better understanding of how to represent decimal fractions as parts of an area, read and write tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, identify decimal, fraction, and percent equivalents, represent decimals by using a number line, as well as order decimals and justify their order through reasoning.
Science: We will be starting Life Science on Thursday. The kids are going to really enjoy exploring earthworms. They will be learning about the different parts of the earthworm and will work in partnerships to observe the behavior and sketch their different parts.
Important Dates
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Language Arts: This week the students are continuing to read from their just right books and create theories about the characters, author’s purpose, etc. This ties into our writing work very well as we continue to develop our literary essays. The literary essays are great practice for the extended response work they will be expected to do in a few weeks. We are focusing on vocabulary this week, specifically equ-, equi, hemi-, and semi-. Last night the students should have started working on their Vocab-U-Bee flash cards. They are due Thursday. We will have our class “Bee” next week. Our grade level Bee will be on March 2nd!
Math: We are in the midst of Boot Camp. We will be covering angles, polygons (area, perimeter, volume) as well as radius, diameter and chords. The Extended Response Problem of the Week is due on Friday for my regular math students.
Social Studies: The students are really digging in to the history of the Dust Bowl. They are currently working on small group presentations comparing the Midwest and Great Plains regions by focusing on climate, economic activity, terrain, land use, etc. They will be presenting their findings tomorrow. This afternoon they will be Skyping with Ms. Tramontin’s uncle who lived through the Dust Bowl. We are very excited about this opportunity! We have started to read Out of the Dust, which is helping them to better understand what life was like from a child’s perspective. Later in the week they will be doing some partner reading around the Dust Bowl.
Important Dates:
Tuesday February 6th Food Drive begins
Thursday February 8th Breakfast with Books When You Reach Me
Tuesday February 14th Valentine’s Day party in the classroom with teacher
Wednesday February 15th Half Day-Conferences
Thursday February 16th Half Day-Conferences
Friday February 17th No School
Monday February 20th No School
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The weather may be wacky, but we are having a great time reading for deeper meaning everyday!
Language Arts: The students are doing a great job of tracking their thinking as they read their Just Right books. I will be wrapping up our goal setting conferences this week as students focus on tracking their thinking around the main characters of their chapter books. Our writing time will be spent exploring Literary Essays. We kicked it off today by reading between the lines of some really powerful short stories. Throughout the rest of the week we will be using our mind pictures to help us write inside the story and tie in our reading workshop work by writing long about the main characters. Our vocabulary words this week cover the sur-, super- and sub- prefixes. Finally, our grammar focus is on adjectives and articles.
Math: Our Geometry unit began last week with the kids exploring angle measurements by using their prior knowledge of triangles, quadrilaterals, and straight lines. This week they are observing patterns among perimeter and area. Today they focused on constructing squares. They will refer back to the patterns they identified yesterday to help them explain how perimeters and areas of rectangles change.
Science/Social Studies: Last week we wrapped up our science unit on Matter. Today we launched our social studies unit on the Dust Bowl. We kicked it off with a focus on U.S. geography and will be traveling back in time via Google Earth to see why the Dust Bowl occurred.
Important Dates:
Wednesday January 25, 2012 MAP Testing (Reading) 9:30-10:30
Tuesday January 31, 2012 Bookblurber Due (Realistic Fiction)
Wednesday February 1, 2012 MAP Testing (Math) 9:30-10:30
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Reading Workshop: Students are continuing to focus on their Reading Plans through their selection of “just right” books. They were broken into small groups last week for Readers Theater. They will be performing on Wednesday!
Writing Workshop: Everyone is working really hard on completing their informational books by Thursday. They will be reading their book to their Second grade buddy Thursday afternoon. The kids are doing a great job with their storyboards, captions, diagrams, and text development!
Science: Understanding of the Scientific Method is well underway! The students are in the midst of two experiments. They are collecting and recording data around their plant variable in order to prove what helps a plant grow healthier. They are also testing “lifeboat” capacity to maximize the number of passengers. They will be graphing their data in addition to explaining their conclusions.
Math: The kids are really enjoying algebra through Hands on Equations! We will be wrapping up Level II this week.
Dates to Remember:
Wednesday December 14th-Student Council Bake Sale
Friday December 16th Winter Party
*December Book Blurber (Free Choice) due upon our return from vacation.
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This week is definitely a busy one from the Book Fair to Breakfast with Books!
Science: Students are exploring the Scientific Method. This week students will be finishing up their Alka-seltzer experiments. We will then be focusing on two more experiments to help students better understand changed variables and controlled factors. Students will be responsible for formulating a hypothesis, graphing their data, and explaining their results.
Math: It is Hands on Equations time! The students will be working on Hands on Equations for the next two weeks. Hands on Equations are a very tactile way to work on algebraic equations.
Reading Workshop: This week students will be focusing on recording their reading more precisely through the use of a reading plan, which will be distributed on Tuesday and will take the place of their nightly reading log. They did a great job looking for “Just Right” books on Friday during library check-out! I will continue to hold individual conferences along with smaller strategy groups to deliver more focused reading instruction. Additionally, this week is a vocabulary week so students should be practicing their words daily.
Writing Workshop: Last week students began brainstorming topics they would like to focus on in order to create an informational book. They have been reading various nonfiction books to help gather ideas of what should be included in an informational text. This is not meant to be a research project, but rather a sharing of information they already have. This week the students will be flushing out their various chapters to see what information gaps they will need to fill. Next week they will be reading their books with second grade as part of our publishing celebration.
Dates to Remember:
Monday December 5th 2:30 Book Fair Preview Time
Tuesday December 6th 10:15 Assembly
Thursday December 8th 7:30 Breakfast with Books The Watsons Go To Birmingham-1963
2:30 Book Fair Buying Time
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5A did a great job preparing for and presenting at the Wax Museum!
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