Upcoming December Events and Reminders:
In December and January there will be no current events for homework. In January students will work on a current events presentation in class. Students have been doing a great job of identifying who, what, where, when, why from their articles. In class I want to work on growing their presenting skills and responding more deeply to their articles on a personal level. In February, we will return to monthly current events homework and I will provide a calendar for the rest of the year. Reading Students are in the final two weeks of working on their book commercials. This week they are writing the scripts for their commercial and next week they will make their commercial using either educreations or imovie. Except for students who still need to finish reading their book, all of this work can be completed in class. Many students worked very hard to finish reading their book over the long weekend. Koodos to them! On Wednesday students will take a STAR reading progress monitor. This is a standard measure we use relatively frequently to monitor students progress. I showed everyone this data at conferences. It is a short adaptive test students will take in the computer lab. I will send home a letter with students most recent progress before the winter break. Writing Students are working on choosing a fiction story draft to publish. This week students will begin the revising and editing process. In this unit we have worked on choosing fiction story ideas creating interesting characters, using dialogue to give them character traits and creating vivid settings through sensory details. Science This week in science we are investigating plate tectonics and their role in forming the "ring of fire". We are doing a science mystery in which we answer the question "Could a volcano pop in my backyard?" In this activity students "discover" the ring of fire by plotting points on a coordinate grid, (also a 4th grade math skill).
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Thank you to the parent volunteers (Mrs. King and Mrs. Prechel) for helping with our weathering stations! Students modeled examples of chemical, physical and biological erosion in class this past week. This week we will model erosion with a few demonstrations.
Dead Word Walk Our dead word walk this past week was pretty spectacular. Students were very mournful and they had a good time visiting their old and future teachers to read their eulogies. I will post some pictures on here as soon as I get some. Students are encouraged to finish reading their book commercial book over this upcoming long weekend. They don't need to do any other work related to the project, just read. Coming up in December:
Have a great long weekend this week. The unit 1 math tests were returned to students on Friday, a rubric and answer key are attached to their test. I scored each question separately as each question represents a different 5th grade math standard. All the standards covered in the first unit will also be covered in the 2nd unit which we began mid-last week. At this point I am not retesting students, since they will have another opportunity to demonstrate mastery of these standards throughout our 2nd unit.
Unit 2 focuses on multi-digit multiplication and division. Students build understanding through exploring ways of breaking apart numbers in multiplication problems using the distributive and associative properties to find partial products. Their understanding builds to how and why the standard algorithm is used. Similarly, students will build their understanding of multi-digit division by finding partial quotients initially, before learning the standard algorithm. Students will continue to practice estimating and rounding, standard and metric forms of measurement and multi-step word problems in this unit. A few notes about homework:
A few notes:
I wanted to share with you that students worked very hard on their candidate profiles. They produced factual, well cited and thoughtful profiles. Students had fun reading each others profiles and voting anonymously, on Monday. During this project and after the election students used very respectful language to discuss the candidates and to express disappointment or happiness. I shared this compliment with the students this week and I wanted to pass it on to you. (Students candidate profiles are graded and will come home this week. ) Reading This past week students selected a chapter book for their book commercial. They are working hard to read these books by the end of November. You may see them reading this book at home. Please, ask your student about what book they selected and how their reading is progressing. As students read they take small chapter notes as well as take notes of setting, character traits, plot, point of view, and clues to the author's message. This week we will continue to work on our skills at identifying and describing character traits, including our ability to justify/give evidence for character traits. Students are working on this as a whole class, individually and in small groups. Writing We have launched into our fiction story writing unit in the past two weeks. Students began drafting a fiction story that they will continue to develop throughout the unit. Please, ask your students what their fiction story is about. Questions about characters, setting, events and dialogue are all welcome. As students write their stories I plan to meet with each one of them to help give their stories shape, elaboration and story elements. You can also check in with your student and see if they have met with me yet. Social Studies Students are in teams (based on table group) in our United States of America social studies competition. This week they received a resource to help them study the state capitals. Since the teams cooperated so well they were able to "unlock" a new resource (a map) to study the location of each state. They will continue to study in their teams until our big competition. Science This week we will dive further into "how the earth changes" with weathering and erosion stations. We will be discussing the different forms of weathering, such as mechanical and chemical, as well as observing the processes that can cause erosion. Thank you for coming to conferences! It is wonderful to see the team that each of student has on their side. Please, continue to let me know if you have questions or concerns at any time. Discovery Days Students had a great time discovering reptiles, microbiology, chemistry, plants, and much more. Thank you to our chaperones for helping out and to OSU for hosting this awesome science event. Dead Word Project Students are finishing up their Dead Word Eulogies at home this week. Some students have shared their beautifully typed writing and creative art with me already. We are looking forward to our solemn ceremony on Monday the 7th, when we will truly say good-bye to these overused words. Please, check in with your student about where they are on this project. Reading For the next two weeks in reading we will be working on identifying character traits and practicing the language we use to communicate about characters. We will be using our class read aloud, Wonder, which has lots of rich characters as well as other story books to practice identifying and describing traits. Book Commercial Project Students will also learn about our new reading project that will take us right up to the winter break. They will be choosing a chapter book (it must be a narrative), that they have not read before to create a book commercial for. Students commercial will include: characters, setting, point of view from which the story is told, the genre, the author's message or purpose and their own personal review and star rating. Here is a link to an example I made. Students will be able to choose their medium for creation: either imovie or educreations. I anticipate lots of creativity! Writing We are beginning a new writing unit that focuses on fiction writing. One thing I like about our writing curriculum is that this doesn't always mean your conventional idea of fiction. The books we read this past week: Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold and Night of the Gargoyles by Eve Bunting, were both slightly unconventional and inspired students to do very creative imaginative writing and writing about inanimate objects that come to life. This week we will continue our fiction study with a focus on character development. Ask your student about what they are writing about in their notebook. Science We are beginning a new science unit called "how the earth changes". We will be learning about erosion and deposition as well as the impacts of rain, water, wind and ice on shaping our earth; but our big focus will be on earthquakes. Eventually we will engage in a design competition to retrofit a building and make it more earthquake safe. Stay tuned for more information about this as well as ways you could help out. Social Studies This week students are finishing their candidate profiles. Students have been careful to be factual, accurate, professional and to cite their sources. These will be sent home sometime next week so look out for them. Before that though students will exchange profiles and make up their mind about who they will vote for, before our own mini class election. After this we will begin studying our 50 states, including location, capitals and interesting facts. Remember Next Week:
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