WEEK OF FEBRUARY 4th - FEBRUARY 8th

WEEK OF FEBRUARY 4th - FEBRUARY 8th

DATES: 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14th.....Field Trip
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 15TH...........No School
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


Thanks to our students for participating in the Purple Day event in order to support a former student!

 



FEBRUARY BOOK PROJECT: Student need to have their books read by Feb. 20th and will begin the project in class. The project is making an iMovie trailer to persuade others to read their book.

Math: We continue to work in our fraction unit. New concepts were adding and subtracting mixed numbers and multiplying fractions.
  
Students are noticing that knowing math facts is increasingly helpful in the fractions units!


READING: We continue our Book Club, 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.

 
WRITING:   Students chose a historical figure to read about and will then write a biography about that person. They will be able to use another technological platform to present the biography as well. They read a took notes this week and will begin their plan on Monday.


SCIENCE:  We discussed balanced and unbalanced forces this week and did a little arm wrestling as demonstration. We applied the concept of balanced and unbalanced forces in a Tug-of-war game.is
  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 18 list will be sent home on Monday.

Have a great weekend!
Laura Blowers 
 

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 
 
 

WEEK OF JAN 21- JAN 24

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
 
This was a really short week! Great days for the kids to enjoy time with friends and family! We are behind a little, but we will work through it in a relaxed manner!


Math: We have 2 more lessons in our first fractions unit. We have been reviewing along the way. 5th grade teachers do not give the test for this unit until after we are involved a bit in the next one as the concepts are used over and over again and allows for more practice.
 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. We have covered comparing fractions, simplifying fractions, converting mixed numbers to improper fractions, greatest common factors, and equivalent fractions. We will continue to review these and will move into converting decimals to fractions next week.



FRACTIONS TEST 1: We don't give the test for this unit until we are already into the next unit -fraction operations. The concepts from our current unit are used repeatedly in the next, so kids get more practice.

READING: We got a whole one day into our Book Clubs this week! I am trying something new this time. Each of the 4 groups is set up in Edmodo as a group. I post guiding questions on Edmodo for each group. As they read and discuss their book, they will type responses, questions, their thoughts, etc. onto the post. I will usually have some individual questions for each student that is a google form for them to respond to individually. Using Edmodo, 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.We are discussing what goes well and what doesn't in order to make this a smooth process.



WRITING:   Students are finishing up their pieces focusing 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 are involved in our Forces and Motion unit which allows for a lot of hands on activities and movement. We are connecting lessons to how they affect our real lives every day since physics is part of our everyday lives and we don't even realize it! 
We just finished some activities that involve calculating speed.


Spelling: No spelling this last week.  List 16 was sent home last week. The skill is blends such as str, bl, thr, etc. The test will be this coming Friday.

Have a great weekend!
Laura Blowers 
 
 

WEEK OF JANUARY 14-18

First of all, I am sorry I didn't post anything last week- I really don't have a good reason, except that time got away from me which isn't a reason at all! 


Spelling Bee:  Rayah Blood won and Evan Eding was runner up. Congratulations to them! Kyle Heyerman, Brendan Nyboer, and Seth Hartz also participated from our class and did well! I am very proud of them!

Assembly: You may have seen information about our writing assembly in the paper or on the news. "Think it Up and Write it Down!" was the theme. All students will have the opportunity to write a story and submit it to teachers. 10 stories will be chosen from 3rd-5th and sent in to the group from Detroit. They will choose some stories and perform these when they come back in March while students whose stories were chosen sit in the author's chair.

 

Spelling: The skill this week was diagraphs- ch, wh, ph, th, sh. We took lesson 15 test on Friday. Tests will be sent home on Monday. List 16 was sent home earlier this week.


Math: Fractions, fractions, fractions! We are involved in the first of 2 fraction units right now. We are also working during RTI with fractions. 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. We have covered comparing fractions, simplifying fractions, converting mixed numbers to improper fractions, greatest common factors, and equivalent fractions. We will continue to review these and will move into converting decimals to fractions next week.

TEST: We don't give the test for this unit until we are already into the next unit -fraction operations. The concepts from this unit are used repeatedly in the next, so kids get more practice.

READING: We have been reading various nonfiction texts the past 2 weeks. Learning the text structures of these texts is an important skill. We have worked on problem solution, cause and effect, vocabulary, how to read for information and connect what we read in a "deep" way where we gain more insight into the text, not a "flat" way.   We will begin reading realistic fiction and work in Book Club groups. 

WRITING:   We have been discussing various sentence structures and had some fun practicing those orally. We reviewed onomatopeoia -sound words. Students are have a couple of options for writing a short story that includes these skills. 

SCIENCE:  We are involved in our Forces and Motion unit which allows for a lot of hands on activities and movement. We are connecting lessons to how they affect our real lives every day since physics is part of our everyday lives and we don't even realize it! 
We just finished some activities that involve calculating speed. Before Christmas we also worked on a lesson about simple machines which we will revisit later.

Have a great weekend!
 

 

Christmas Giving Project: We raised around $250! A name was drawn and it was Seth Hartz. He chose to donate the Make-a-Wish foundation.

DECEMBER 17- DECEMBER 21

Many pictures below!

I hope you know that I sincerely enjoy being with this class each day! Thank you for the gifts, kind words, notes, and emails. I hope all the thank you cards got home to you!

Christmas Giving Project: We raised around $250! A name was drawn and it was Seth Hartz. He chose to donate the Make-a-Wish foundation.

LOG CABINS- These were creative and a lot of effort was put into them. Kids and teachers from other classes enjoy viewing these in the library and hallway. The kids are really proud of their work as they should be.

 

ElOQUENCE DAY: What fun! We went to the Cafe' de Eloquence' at Haven Church where parents did an incredible job of decorating, cooking, and serving. We so appreciate it! I hope to get the picture that was taken of them to post here. The kids did practice their manners and I thought they did quite well. The pictures are below- if I receive others I will add them!

We missed Brendan and Chenin

Our menu

Being "Uneloquent"! Being silly sometimes is what holds you together as a team!

The guys- dapper!

The girls- lovely!


The Log Cabins- amazing!

 

 Math:   We took the test today- some didn't finish and I also couldn't get all of them graded. We will review and wrap up after Christmas break.
  PLEASE HAVE YOUR CHILD PRACTICE MATH FACTS!

Reading:  Sign of the Beaver is completed and we all enjoyed it. We will watch the movie when we return to school and compare it to the book. They are quite different! Then we will work again with non-fiction texts and then Guided Reading Groups. We have practiced many strategies together as a class and often the kids like us to read aloud together so we can practice during discussions- posing questions, discussing as a group and then responding. We talk vocabulary a lot!

 

Writing: We learned about comma usage and practiced using them. Then we read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves which shows students how commas and apostrophes can completely change meaning. Pairs of students took a sentence, wrote it two ways, and illustrated it. Some chose to draw and some used the Kerpoof! site.


We are moving a little slowly on getting things transferred to their websites. They had another lesson on Thursday in infotech. Hopefully when we return the science and writing items will be on within a week. I have a new strategy called; remember to remind the kids and myself that when they have spare time they could work on this instead of waiting until infotech now that they can do it on their own!

Merry Christmas to all of you!!

12-12-12 We celebrated 12-12-12 by having each of us bring 12 items in a bag. We wrote clues for them to see if the class could guess what we brought. We had a lot of fun with that! Since we have been giving our persuasive election speeches for the best fruit/vegetable, I brought in a variety of 12 fruits.

DECEMBER 10 - DECEMBER 14

12-12-12 We celebrated 12-12-12 by having each of us bring 12 items in a bag. We wrote clues for them to see if the class could guess what we brought. We had a lot of fun with that! Since we have been giving our persuasive election speeches for the best fruit/vegetable, I brought in a variety of 12 fruits.

Even picky eaters had fun with this!

 We tried star fruit, mango, a red pummelo, cactus fruit, mini bananas (just cuz they're so cute!) and persimmon which left the weirdest dry feeling in our mouths! We also broke open a coconut brought in by Nathan Haverdink for his speech and tried the coconut milk. Austin Rudolph brought in fresh fennel. Most agreed it was really good! Who knew? Here's a picture of the fruit we ate.

LOG CABINS- (OPTIONAL)......  Due Tuesday December 18th

Eloquence Day:.....................  Friday, December 21st from 11-1. 

    Our location is always a SECRET! Students are expected to dress up- girls skirts or dresses if possible. Boys wear khakis/slacks and a nice shirt. We prefer no jeans, but I would NOT expect anyone to purchase something new for this. Wear the nicest ones you have if you don't own dress pants.  This should be fun, not stressful!

Reading at home:   There will be no project for December, but I expect students to read. They will be able to give me a short summary, written or verbal, and receive a certificate to Pizza Hut.

HOMEWORK: 1) Division page with 2-digit divisor for practice and review.
                                  2) Read, read, read
                                  3) Log cabin if you are making one.

 Math:   We have been working with 2-digit divisors and practicing strategies such as estimating, rounding, and using compatible numbers in order to work with these larger numbers. We are reviewing decimal concepts and practicing upcoming concepts as well.

  
  PLEASE HAVE YOUR CHILD PRACTICE MATH FACTS!

 RTI:   As you know, this time is spent reteaching concepts that students should enter 5th grade with. We have begun focusing our attention on fractions; comparing fractions, converting improper fractions to mixed numbers, adding and subtracting fraction and mixed numbers with like denominators. I will expect them to not only be able to work the algorithm, but be able to draw and explain it as well.

Reading:  Sign of the Beaver is our new genre unit and the class is thoroughly enjoying this book. It ties in well with our social studies unit.  The class chose to read it as a class- they like to stop and discuss along the way and ask questions! Students are also doing some written comprehension work. 

 

 

Writing: 

This week students presented their campaign speeches for their fruit or vegetable. They are working on placing the videos of this on their web pages.I will video these and put them on my fusion page- kids should place them on their websites. (Have you checked out their websites from infotech??)

   I am now requiring the kids to perform a lot more revising and editing on their own. Complete sentences, main idea with details that support only that idea in the paragraph, paragraphing, punctuation... some of the things we talk about frequently. Here are some pictures:

































 

Spelling: 

This week's skill was contractions. I sent the list home for lesson 12 and 13. This skill next week is homophones. 
 

Science:
  We discussed point of reference and measuring distance. We used plastic jumping frogs to test  this out.

 Enjoy your weekend everyone!

DECEMBER 3RD - DECEMBER 7TH

DECEMBER 3RD - DECEMBER 7TH

We ended the week with some Christmas music, candy canes, and an art project. Then we had an impromptu competition with Mrs. Maxson's class to see who could sing Jingle Bells the loudest!

Eloquence Day: Notes went home on Wednesday for Eloquence Day volunteers. Be sure to get that in if you want to help out with this event. This will be on Friday, December 21st from 11-1. Our location is always a SECRET! Students are expected to dress up- girls skirts or dresses if possible. Boys wear khakis/slacks and a nice shirt. We prefer no jeans, but I would NOT expect anyone to purchase something new for this. Wear the nicest ones you have if you don't own dress pants.  This should be fun, not stressful!

Reading at home: There will be no project for December, but I expect students to read. They will be able to give me a short summary, written or verbal, and receive a certificate to Pizza Hut.

HOMEWORK: There are 8 division problems for review.

 Math:   

   We will take our first division test on Tuesday. We have been doing quite a bit of review.  Our next unit is division as well, dividing by 2 digit divisors among other concepts.
  PLEASE HAVE YOUR CHILD PRACTICE MATH FACTS! Flashcards, computer program, just practice. This is a year where more steps are required for many concepts and knowing the facts is going to save your child some frustration and time.
  RTI: As you know, this time is spent reteaching concepts that students should enter 5th grade with. We have begun focusing our attention on fractions; comparing fractions, converting improper fractions to mixed numbers, adding and subtracting fraction and mixed numbers with like denominators. I will expect them to not only be able to work the algorithm, but be able to draw and explain it as well.

Reading:  Sign of the Beaver is our new genre unit and the class is thoroughly enjoying this book. It ties in well with our social studies unit.  The class chose to read it as a class- they like to stop and discuss along the way and ask questions! Students are also doing some written comprehension work. 

 
We keep reading about cornmeal, corn cakes, corn mush, corn pudding- so I brought in cornbread and molasses so the kids could try it. Corn bread- most liked it. Plain molasses- not so much!

 

Log Cabins: They are OPTIONAL: These are due December 18th. I sent home the information and we have all discussed it. FYI: I talked with the kids about the fact that this is OPTIONAL. We talked about being respectful of your time- students should be planning now, making a list of materials, going over this with you and beginning soon. We talked about how this should not be a last minute thing that gets thrown at you. It is Ok to work on this project with your child. 

Writing: 

Monday students will begin presenting their campaign speeches for their fruit or vegetable. They are making campaign posters as well. I will video these and put them on my fusion page- kids should place them on their websites. (Have you checked out their websites from infotech??)

   I am now requiring the kids to perform a lot more revising and editing on their own. Complete sentences, main idea with details that support only that idea in the paragraph, paragraphing, punctuation... some of the things we talk about frequently.

Spelling: 

This week's skill was apostrophes. We use them to show possession and in contractions. Possession rules can be tricky. I am giving the skills test next week as they needed more practice. We will revisit this frequently.
   I will send lesson 12 and 13 spelling lists home on Monday

Science:
  This week students have been working in groups to make a marble take the longest amount of time to go from one end of the table to the other. They are designing and testing various set-ups. Each group read their driving question and then taped their trials. In infotech, they began making these into an iMovie to place on their sites. Monday we will wrap up by discussing more about the forces involved, what went well, and what didn't.

This is a long unit with A LOT of vocabulary. Science vocabulary can be more difficult for kids because these are not words they regularly use or encounter. Students can study the vocabulary online in Study Stacks. I have shown them this and how to use it. It is on their science Edmodo account. I will continue to add more vocabulary as it comes up.

 Enjoy your weekend everyone!