Week of October 21-October 23

Week of October 21-October 23

Thursday Oct 24th ...........No School

Friday Oct 25th..................No School

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FUSION PAGE   Mrs. Blowers Fusion Page

You can find fractions and other math links here as well as spelling, grammar, and sites for reading.

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CONFERENCES: Thank you to everyone for coming to conferences! Be sure to contact me at any time concerning your child. You don't have to wait for another conference.

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                                   THE HAWKEYE HUSTLE
  WOW! Thank you parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and businesses for your donations to PTO. We really appreciate your support for our school! We had fun running, walking, dancing and skipping this morning. 
  I also want to thank Mrs. Peterson fro being our DJ all day long! And of course our committee that put this together: Lisa Kramer, Cindy Kleinheksel, and Rhonda Hulst. We appreciate their dedication to our school.
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Varsity Football PLayers are doing a volunteer effort and today we had a player come in and read to us.
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MATH:
  This week we practiced finding common denominators, reducing fractions, making and drawing equivalent fractions, and adding and subtracting mixed numbers with renaming.
 
READING
   Read aloud: We are read and discussed Echohawk as well as searched for similes, metaphor, and personification.
We began book club and are working on comprehension skills.

WRITING:
 Students finished their plans. Rough drafts are due Wednesday.

SPELLING:
  I sent home lesson 7 today. The test will be next Friday.
If your child wants to play games/ practice tests, go to:
Spelling City  

Week of October 14-October 18

 Monday Oct 21st................Conferences 

 Tuesday Oct 22nd.. ...........Conferences   

Wednesday Oct 23rd..........Hawkeye Hustle

 Thursday Oct 24th ...........No School

Friday Oct 25th..................No School

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FUSION PAGE   Mrs. Blowers Fusion Page

You can find fractions and other math links here as well as spelling, grammar, and sites for reading.

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Homework:  
Reading: Reading at least an average of 20 minutes at home most days of the week is homework all year.
 Math: Students have math homework due Monday.

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CONFERENCES: Your child is welcome and encouraged to come to conferences with you. They have worked on a presentation and written goals for themselves that they'll share.

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                         ** WEDNESDAY Oct. 23rd **                                        1st Annual Hamilton El. Walk-a-Thon…
                                  The Hawkeye Hustle
  We hope for this to be the only fundraiser this year. Please have donations in by Wednesday if you chose to participate.
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  Partnering with Mrs. Sikma's Class:
You can view some photos in the "Photos" tab of the blog.

Tuesday our class partnered with Mrs. Sikma's class to assist them with revising and editing their work during infotech. This is also helpful for our own class as we are also working on improving these skills.

   MATH:
  We continue working in our unit Adding and Subtracting Fractions. We have worked on adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, equivalent fractions and finding the lowest common denominator, and add/subtract mixed numbers. We will continue to work on this into next week to strengthen these skills. We used pattern blocks and graph paper to show equivalent fractions and will keep working on this. Students can often do the "math" part of this but have a difficult time conceptualizing it in order to retain the concept.
 
READING
   Read aloud: We are reading and discussing Echohawk a novel about a boy's life as a Native American since being taken away from his "white" family as a child and living a Native American family as their son. It ties in with our Social Studies unit.

We began book club on Thursday. We will be working in small groups on reading comprehension strategies and groups will be meeting with me. 

WRITING:
 Students began researching their tribes for their reports this week using a minimum of 2 sources. We practiced writing notes and how to write these into a paragraph. They had the option of working with a partner or alone on this piece as well as a choice in how they want to present their report.

SPELLING:
  Students will took the Lesson 6 Word and Skill test on Monday. The skill for this week was the homophones their, there, and they're.
TESTS WILL NOW BE ON FRIDAYS: It doesn't work well in my schedule for Mondays.
Next week we will not have a test because of the short week, but will review some concepts.
If your child wants to play games/ practice tests, go to:
Spelling City  

SCIENCE: 
We have been studying balanced and unbalanced forces- we arm wrestled and played tug-of-war to show these concepts. We are now concentrating on simple machines and performing some investigations about these.

October 12

Tuesday, October 15...................MEAP Math Testing
Wednesday, October 16..............MEAP Science (5th grade only)
Friday, Oct. 18 PTO Popcorn .... $.25/bag

Homework:  
Reading: Reading at least an average of 20 minutes at home most days of the week is homework all year.
 Math: Students have Lesson 53 and could choose to do lesson 54 on the back side if they wanted. Not all students were ready for this part.

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CONFERENCES: Your child is welcome and encouraged to come to conferences with you. They have worked on a presentation and written goals for themselves that they'll share.

                          1st Annual Hamilton El. Walk-a-Thon…
                                            The Hawkeye Hustle
 Information and an envelope were sent home on Thursday. We hope for this to be the only fundraiser this year.
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 MEAP PREP SITE:  MEAP PREP
Click on the purple link above to have your child practice MEAP Prep material.

 MATH:  
  Students took the test over Patterns and Coordinate Graphs on Wednesday and did very well! We have been working on fraction concepts since the beginning of the school year, but Thursday we began our first full unit, Adding and Subtracting Fractions. We have worked on adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, equivalent fractions and finding the lowest common denominator. This coming week we will begin add/subtract mixed numbers.
 
READING
   We finished Guests and students wrote about ways Moss, the main character, has changed over the course of the book which is a learning target. We completed a character study   discussing character traits and focused on character motives. We continued to discuss  literary devices such as personification,simile, and metaphors.

We watched a History.com video about the Mary Celeste, a ship whose crew disappeared in the 1800's after leaving from New York, in preparation for reading about this "mystery from history" We used clues to solve this mystery on our own and searched text evidence to examine our theories. We learned a lot of new vocabulary associated with ships! We have a boating expert in Zachary to help us along.


Next week we will begin book clubs where students will read and discuss their book together and meet with me to work on strategies and discussion as well.
  
WRITING:
 Students wrote a simile poem centered on fall. You will see these hanging in the hall when you come for conferences. We will begin reports about Indian tribes this week- something they are learning about in social studies.

SPELLING:
  Students will take the Lesson 5 Word and Skill test on Monday. The skill we practiced was ways to spell the /k/ sound.
  Monday I will send the word list for Lesson 6 home- the skill for this week is the homophones their, there, and they're.
If your child wants to play games/ practice tests, go to:
Spelling City 

UPCOMING DATES:

 Tuesday, October 8............ MEAP Reading Testing
 Wednesday, October 9........MEAP Reading Testing

Tuesday, October 15...................MEAP Math Testing
Wednesday, October 16..............MEAP Science (5th grade only)
Friday, Oct. 18 PTO Popcorn .... $.25/bag

Homework:  
Reading: Reading at least an average of 20 minutes at home most days of the week is homework all year.
 Math: Students have a coordinate graph review page- both sides.

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Me with my AWESOME  group of kids!! -Minus 2 that insisted on taking the picture!

                          1st Annual Hamilton El. Walk-a-Thon…
                                            The Hawkeye Hustle
The Hamilton El. PTO is happy to announce an all-new fundraising event…a school-wide Walk-a-Thon! This event, called The Hawkeye Hustle, will take place on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 during the school day and all Hamilton El. students will have the opportunity to come out and walk around the track for a specified period of time. This will be a great way for kids to have fun, be active and raise money for our school at the same time! Since this will replace the fundraiser that we usually participate in through The Goodies Factory, we are hoping that it will be a huge success so we do not have to do another fundraiser later in the year! At this time, the PTO is looking for local businesses that may be willing to help sponsor this event. If you know of anyone who may be interested, please have them contact Ronda Hulst at 616-218-3542 or at rondahulst@gmail.com for further details. Our goal is for every Hamilton El. student to receive a walk-a-thon t-shirt! More details on the walk-a-thon, along with other ways you can help, will be coming home soon, so please watch for it!
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 MEAP PREP SITE:  MEAP PREP
Click on the purple link above to have your child practice MEAP Prep material.

 MATH:  
 We began our unit on Patterns and Coordinate Graphs. Students are looking at data tables and determining patterns as well as graphing the information as coordinates on a graph. The kids are having fun with the coordinate graphing pictures they have been doing for additional practice. We will take the test for this unit on Wednesday this week.

 
READING
  During Read Aloud the past 2 weeks, we have been reading Guests which is the focal book in our first genre unit series. During this time we work on comprehension strategies through discussions. We also have been doing a character study and discussing character traits, working on literary devices such as personification, and doing vocabulary work. 

We read nonfiction articles this week and focused on cause and effect. We discussed how cause/effect relationships are part of our everyday lives. We also watched a video about similes, metaphors, and personification set to the song "Firework" which contains several of those literary devices as does our read aloud book, Guests.

How can you help at home? Reading daily builds fluency and comprehension. A 5th grade level goal is to read 130 words per minute by the end of the year.
  
WRITING:
 We have had some Author's Chair time for sharing what kids have written. We will finish this week. We also wrote simile poems to practice this concept.

SPELLING:
  Students will take the Lesson 4 Word and Skill test on Monday. The skill we practiced was silent letters. 
  Monday I will send the word list for Lesson 5 home- the skill for this week is various spellings of the /k/ sound.
If your child wants to play games/ practice tests, go to:
Spelling City