November 25-26

We have quiet a short week! I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and a few days off! 

Tuesday afternoon we will have our second marble party. Kids should have brought home a hot chocolate permission slip on Friday. They need to bring this by Tuesday, if they'd like to have hot chocolate! Kids voted on a pajama/game/gum/hot chocolate day...I think I got all of their ideas in there! 

5H Math: We will review polygon attributes this week and kids will have a chance to apply their knowledge to a design task. Students will design their own tile floor using polygons. This will give us a chance to use some of the geometric vocabulary the kids have learned. 

Language Arts 

Kids will get a chance to continue working on their second writer's workshop piece this week. We will also continue working on opinion/argument writing. Last week kids wrote short opinion pieces (about a paragraph long). I will have kids partner up this week and look through each others' pieces for the required parts of their paper (attention grabbing beginning, thesis/opinion, support for opinion, ending sentence/restate of opinion). As we write more extended pieces, there will be more required parts. If we have time, we will write another opinion piece about a Time for Kids article. 

Kids will get a Time for Kids magazine tomorrow that they will need to read at home, Monday night. They will have a little bit of time Monday morning, but probably not enough to read the whole thing. They will take the quiz Tuesday and should be ready to discuss the articles. 

Social Studies 

Kids are taking the 13 colony map quiz this Monday. On Monday and Tuesday, kids will have the opportunity to show what they've learned by choosing one of several activities.

Just as a heads up, the Colonization Unit test will probably be the week after Thanksgiving. It won't be until late that week, but kids could always start going over their notes! 

Citizenship

We've been talking about empathy in class; we've got great kids in 5H, but it's a good reminder that we need to put ourselves in someone else's shoes sometimes!

November 18-22

5H Math: This week we will have several explorations which focus on understanding which shapes share attributes/properties.  We will play a game that requires kids to find common attributes among different shapes. We will also learn about the different types of triangles: acute, obtuse, right, equiangular, scalene, isosceles, equilateral.  Triangles can also have more than one name; for example, a triangle can be an obtuse scalene triangle. Students will be asked to compare, contrast and analyze the properties or attributes of these two-dimensional figures.

The kids have two sheets of geometry vocabulary. It would be a good idea to review some of these terms with your children. We have not finished labeling all of the terms yet, but will do so as they come up. Today we talked about some types of angles: acute, obtuse and right.

Kids will also get their unit 3 tests back this week. I will let you know when you can expect to see them coming home!

Language Arts:
This week we will begin another read aloud "The Liberation of Gabriel King," which is about a boy in the fourth grade who is terrified of moving on to fifth grade as well as almost everything else. The main character and his best friend show different kinds of courage and in different situations throughout the book. The book is set during the 1970s in a southern town that has members of the Ku Klux Klan.  We will study vocabulary throughout the book as well as practice responding to text. The book will be the source of several reading and writing lessons.

We have begun a word wall in our room, of words your kids have discovered in their own books. I'm encouraging kids to notice new words and determine their meanings through a number of strategies, then post them on the wall. We talk about the words we've found and I will encourage kids to use these words in their own writing.

Today, we read a couple opinion/argument writing pieces to determine what should be included in an opinion piece. Students found that you should state your opinion in a clear way in the first paragraph of your piece, state several reasons your opinion is the "correct" opinion (using facts), state the opposing point of view and discredit it, restate your opinion in your conclusion, as well as use persuasive/strong word choice. We will begin writing our own opinion pieces soon. Kids will use a Time for Kids article for our first piece and then move on to other topics (eithe current event, social studies topic or something from our read aloud).

Kids have also started their second Writer's Workshop pieces. Most kids are in the drafting stage. We are working on improving our skills from our first writer's workshop piece as well as our memoirs.

For grammar, we will learn how to properly make nouns plural as well as possessive.

Word Study: The C-le word study quiz is this Wednesday. From talking with everyone at conferences, I am not sure how many of the kids are sharing their word study notebooks with you. Before a quiz, I always tell the kids to bring their notebooks home to share with you. You can help them study, by reading a word from the current section of their notebook (C-le) and have them write and mark it on a separate piece of paper. Words they write in their notebooks were either done together as a class or done independently and corrected in class...so they should be correct in order to study from.  Toward the end of the week, we will practice a few more homophones: meddle/medal, bridle/bridal, peddle/pedal, and muscle/mussel.

Social Studies:  This week we are learning about the 13 colonies. Students will need to be able to label a map showing the names of each of the colonies as well as the 3 different regions: New Engand , Middle and Southern Colonies. We will have this map quiz next Monday (11-25). We will be reading from our social studies texts, watching videos as well as reading other nonfiction texts to learn about the colonies. Students will focus on the geography and natural resources as well as how these factors affected the economy of each region. Students will also learn about the people that settled in each region. The students made their own organizers today to take notes from the various sources.  
 

November 12-15

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend.

I have really enjoyed meeting with all the parents I've met with so far, and look forward to seeing the rest of you Wednesday night!

5H Math: Our unit 3 test has really taken some kids a lot of time, so a few kids are still finishing up. Today, students worked on their tests, took a pre-test for unit 4 as well as worked on a "transfer task". This task required kids to use multiple skills we've learned about so far in a realistic multi-step situation.

Unit 4 focuses on geometry (see standards in email). We'll start by thinking about how geometry is used in the world around us, looking at design and architecture. Kids will need to learn or review a lot of vocab in this unit. We'll be starting with: polygon, quadrilateral/quadrangle, and the names of different types of polygons. An important part of this unit is realizing that polygons can have more than one name (e.g. a square is also a rectangle, polygon, quadrangle/quadrilateral, and a parallelogram).

I have not updated the links in the math tab for unit 4, but will do so soon. I have found more web sites that will be helpful, I just need to get the links ready. I will send an email when I've done so!

Language Arts

This week we are reading an historical fiction story in our Harcourt books about the Mayflower. This ties in well to courage as well as our social studies focus of settlers coming to North America. We've started reviewing the vocab for the story, and kids will read the story on Wednesday. Kids will be asked to put themselves in the place of the people on the journey and record what it would have been like to travel across the ocean. Students will think and write about what kind of courage this type of journey took as well as the courage it would take to start anew in North America. We will take the comprehension test on Friday.

Also, this week we will talk about how we determine the meaning of unknown words while reading as well as start an ongoing collection of interesting words we come across in our independent reading.

Besides writing about the Harcourt story and in social studies, students have also started brainstorming ideas for a second writer's workshop piece for the year. I'm encouraging kids to build upon their strengths and think about areas they need to improve for this writing piece. As always, kids should be working their way through the writing process.

Word Study: We will start the Cle (consonant -le) syllable pattern this week. Students will have a quiz on this pattern next Wednesday 11/20. Words that fit this pattern are: stifle, scribble, and responsible. Kids will have marked word examples in their word study notebooks.

We will also talk about and take notes on pronouns (what are they and when to use them) as well as how to properly make nouns plural.

Social Studies:
We will be reading quite a bit from our social studies books this week. We are learning more about what groups of people came to North America to settle and why (Pilgrims, Puritans, people searching for the "Northwest Passage").  We'll also be color-coding a map to show where people came from and where they settled throughout the week.

Citizenship:
This week we'll be learning about empathy. What does it mean to have and show empathy? 

November 4-8

I hope everyone has had a good weekend! I have updated the "Upcoming Events" list along the left side of the blog for your reference.  I look forward to seeing you all in the next two weeks at conferences!  In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions.

This week:

5H Math: We will spend Monday going a bit deeper in our understanding of multiplying decimals by using a different method to multiply decimal numbers. Students will use an area model to multiply decimals. This will help students understand why multiplying two decimals will result in a product smaller than the two multipliers/factors. On Tuesday, we will review the skills we've learned about during this unit. Wednesday, kids will take the unit 3 test.

Because of meetings this week, I can only offer a study session during lunch and/or recess on Tuesday. I will continue to pull kids individually or in small groups on Monday and Tuesday for support as needed.

As a reminder, please have your child go on to Xtramath at least 3 times per week.

Language Arts:

During the first quarter, the language arts theme was Identity. This second quarter, our theme is Courage. These themes help us to tie our reading, writing, even social studies and science together. The focus isn't necessarily to learn about courage (though we will to some degree), but to work on language arts skills with the common idea of courage to tie our lessons together. For example, this week we will read a picture book entitled "Courage" and students will be asked to explain the theme of the book drawing from details in the text.

Another skill we will work on this week, is making meaning about a topic by gathering information from multiple sources. We will use our Time for Kids magazine as well as some nonfiction books to gather information about Bats. We will use this skill during our social studies reading as well, as we learn about settlers coming to North America.

Students have finished their rough drafts of their memoirs and many have started or have finished typing. I'm having kids hold off on printing until we can go through a few writing mini-lessons. When meeting with the kids I noticed a few common areas students need some support: not having run-on or incomplete sentences, knowing when to use commas, knowing when to start a new paragraph as well as using adequate description in their writing. We will work on all of these topics this week, but of course we won't be perfect at these skills after this week. We'll continue to work on them in the weeks to come. After revising/editing for these common errors, students will print their memoirs Thursday. Some children may spend some time typing at home this week; the typing needs to be finished before school on Thursday. We may edit a bit during the day, but kids should not have parts of their writing left to type.

Word Study: I had mentioned that we would start the syllable pattern -Cle last week, but we will be focusing on the different sounds the letter "c" and the letter "g" make instead (-Cle will be next). Students will learn the letter "c" sounds like /s/when followed by e, i, or y; and the letter "g" sounds like /j/ when followed by e, i, or y. No quiz this week.

Social Studies:
This week we will continue learning why settlers came to North America, what their journey was like as well as what life was like setting up a colony. I am encouraging students to inquire and think of their questions about this topic, and some students will be able to have some time to research their personal inquiries.