Autumn is upon us, our weather is beautiful and the leaves turning...
Our group has maintained its lead in the Orange Ruler Fundraiser standings, so I simply commend and thank our students and families for this successful effort. As of Friday, September 30, the second place team is just $67 dollars behind, so we may want to set in for one final effort should that lead be important. In any case, there is much to be proud of here!
We had our first art class, with a focus on foreshadowing, led by Mrs. Liz St. Andre (and five other moms -joined our class). Jamba juice was provided as a reward to the students for their Orange Ruler efforts. Mrs. St. Andre gave a wonderful introduction to this zany art approach that the kids thoroughly enjoyed. Drawings are in progress and the plan is to provide brief respite in art over the next two weeks so the artworks can be completed and provide some mental rest at times when the studies may wear on.
Curriculum to Calendar:
HW Packet & Literacy Sheet links for the week: Homework Packets
I. Writing:
Homework was bent around the Expository or How To writing assignment's First Draft, which was due today, Thursday, for sharing in small groups in class. Tomorrow, Friday, the groups reconvene to focus on the constructive feedback process. We have emphasized that writing is a process and that we are more concerned about editing and revising than final copy. Nevertheless, students will have a chance to choose a piece of their own from the four assignments thus far for further editing.
II. Mathematics:
To confirm what you may have read in your child's planner this week, no math homework was given on Tuesday to provide additional student time for their writing. The weekly homework packets were collected, selected math problems checked in teams, and assignments checked off for completion. A double-sided sheet for lesson 13 was the only sheet sent for homework on Thursday, due Friday.
Students who had completed all of their work this week were provided extra math enrichment sheets, which may be turned in by Monday.
Math scores from last Wednesday's District test were entered into into the Gradecam system
Also, On Wednesday students took a multi-lesson quiz and practiced reporting corrected problems as objective-based scores, and tabulated these into Standards' based forms.
III. Reading.
We continue on our Journey with Wonder. It's a great glue for the classroom community.
In our non-fiction science reading, students practiced and discussed cause and effect, and the connections between questions and speculations.
All students also took their District reading pretest, and students with higher reading needs were given the more heavily diagnostic Fountas and Pinnell reading comprehension assessment on Wednesday and Thursday. Both tests have been uploaded into digital tracking systems.
There is a lot of extra interest and love for threatened animals being generated by some really healthy group discussions on the topics. Saskia and Lauren spontaneously created a sign up sheet, which already has approximately 25 signatures from students in class (plus their teacher's), with the goal of expressing interest and support for threatened species. On Thursday I gave the girl's space in our community time to begin discussion on the theme and encouraged them to carry this farther. They also elected this subject of study in the elective part of their computer lab time this week. Let's see where this leads us...
Just 1/3 of students completed last week's Reader's Response homework, and for a number of reasons, I'm going to revise this procedure to widen the response time window and it have it more usefully connected to learning by providing opportunities for sharing, and making the writing about the books we read connected to our classroom culture. Therefore, there is no reading response homework Thursday. Current plans are to reintroduce the activity when we have whole class computer access next Tuesday.
IV. Connections
Here's some helpful topics for conversation with your fifth grader this week:
A. Connecting with our U.S. Geography focus this week, talk about the physical features of our area and country in geographical terms like tributary, bay, estuary, and gulf.
B. Does reading Wonder have an impact on how we are relating to our classmates this year?
C. What animals and animal habitats have you been reading this week?
D. For math, create opportunities to try questions like: About how many offices do you think are in this building anyway? How did you calculate that? From the garden boxes with yellow roses, how many small bouquets of flowers do you think you could make?
E. How does the Bohemian folk dance or electric slide go?
F. What are you reading personally this week?
F. What home studies is your child pursing of their own interest? Can these be shared at school? We discussed Ben A's interest and knowledge of wildlife this week and he brought in a blue-jay's feather.
Have a wonderful weekend!
