WEEK OF JANUARY 28TH - FEBRUARY 1ST

DATES:
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8.....Release Time
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22...Popcorn Day
FRIDAY, MARCH 1............No School- Records Day
FRIDAY, MARCH 8............Half day of school- Dismissal is at 11:40-no lunch


 
WOW- more snow days! We keep pushing due dates, projects back with all of these days off. The kids are handling the continuing change in schedule well.
  I will be gone at a conference on Monday and Tuesday- not great timing with the snow days. Mrs. Immink will be there.

Valentine's Day: 5th grade does not have a Valentine's Day party as in other grades- no Valentine's Day cards. We will let you know next week what we plan.

Math: We completed all lessons in our first fractions unit, reviewing older concepts along the way.
  We began our next fractions unit this week. We have added and subtracted fractions with unlike denominators. Most of us have a solid grasp of this as we have been working on this in RTI since December. We will move onto adding and subtracting mixed numbers with same denominators next-another concepts we have practiced in RTI. Then add/subtract mixed numbers with unlike denominators. These concepts require students to use skills learned in the previous unit.

I have placed a folder for fractions on my fusion page. It has very good tutorials for review and activities attached.  I will continue to add to this. Click on "Fractions" and choose your topic.
  
I keep track of which students are needing more practice with certain concepts and they are getting extra help, have tutorials to watch, and if necessary I will send additional practice home next week.

Students are noticing that knowing math facts is increasingly helpful in the fractions units!


READING: We continue our Book Club, even though we are behind where I want to be! They are getting the hang of using Edmodo. It's nice that even when I am not meeting with a group, I will be able to monitor students' thinking and respond to them before we meet if necessary. There will be some paper/pencil work as well- right now they are doing a character study and some grammar activities.

 
WRITING:   Several students are finished with their Snowman story. I am grading those this weekend. They are on a google doc. Some students need to revise again and then I will grade it. Students were given a rubric and assignment sheet showing the goals. Some don't use this and keep handing me things "finished" and are being sent back 3 and 4 times. I have been addressing this with reminders about being thorough, following the rubrics and checklists. This will be everyone's final try at revising, then it's graded. When conferencing with students, we write ideas on sticky notes and their papers so they can refer to them. On the google doc, I write comments for them to follow as well.


A review of the assignment: Their pieces focus on onomatopeoia (sound words such as bang, crash, etc) and using various sentence structures. Instead of using so many subject/predicate sentences, they have a graphic organizer that has a variety of sentence structures with examples. Using a variety of structures allows writing to flow, seem less choppy, and shows a progression in their writing abilities. We will make this a focus from now on.

SCIENCE:  We discussed balanced and unbalanced forces this week and did a little arm wrestling as demonstration. Tug-of-war is next if we can get the gym!
  We have been practicing vocabulary and concepts by reading the definition, summarizing what it means, and showing an verbally and physically giving an example. We have been talking about how memorizing a definition isn't helpful if we don't know what it means! There will be a quiz, but with snow days and me being gone next week, I am moving it to Monday, February 11.


Spelling: Lesson 16 tests will be given on Monday.

Have a great weekend!
Laura Blowers