WEEK OF FEBRUARY 18- FEBRUARY 22

Friday, March 1.......................................No School- Records Day
Monday, March  4...................................Ned Show Assembly
Monday/Tuesday, March 4th/5th .........CONFERENCES
Friday March 8.............................Half day of school- Dismissal is at 11:40-no lunch
Saturday, March 16 ....................Everything For Kids Sale 9:00-2:00
Monday March 18....................... PTO Meeting

 FEBRUARY BOOK PROJECT: students began their iMovies in Infotech on Thursday, will complete them next week and then present. They should then post them to their websites.

Math: We tested Friday over our first fractions unit. These skills will continue to be practiced and used in our current unit, fraction operations. The test for this will likely be the week of March 4th- I will keep you posted. We continue to review multiplying and dividing larger numbers. 
 *It would be helpful to have your child practice a few of these each week! They will continue to be tested on these concepts into middle school.
Multiply: 3 digits by 2 digits such as 457 x 23. 
Divide: 4 digits by 2 digits such as 6504 divide by 25.
  
Students are noticing that knowing math facts is increasingly helpful in the fractions units! This will continue to be very necessary from here on out in math as multiple operations are being used within concepts.

READING: We wrapped up Book Clubs this week. Students are finishing up a short project Monday, we will share them, and move on to our last genre unit, The Fighting Ground. I will also be adding in non-fiction material.




MONTHLY BOOK PROJECTS: 
 I will be giving students a new book project for March soon. It will involve non-fiction texts. I will send home details about this later.  
 It is important for your child to be reading at home frequently, something I know you hear every year. We often get focused on chapter books as kids get older. But shorter or lengthier non-fiction material including biographies, news articles, magazines, and other informational materials about a variety of subjects are also important as students are learning to read for information. So have your child tell you about topics they are interested in and read up on it from numerous sources!

 
WRITING:   Students are working on drafts for their biographies. We had some discussion about how to incorporate parts of their plans into various paragraphs where they best fit- this can be tough! For example: In which paragraph would the quotes they found fit best? Should you have a paragraph about interesting facts or try to incorporate them into other paragraphs where they may fit? What if you have one that doesn't work anywhere? How do we make it fit seamlessly somewhere?


SCIENCE:  We reviewed kinds of forces and measuring forces. I showed the students a video clip about Newton's first law of motion: Part 1: an object in motion will stay in motion at the same speed and direction until an outside force acts on it. Part 2: an object at rest stays at rest unless a force acts on it. We demonstrated this ourselves. Students then performed an investigation with a piece of track and a marble to show whether the marble adheres to Newton's Law. We will revisit this next week to put it all together. We have been doing a lot of putting the definitions and concepts into our own words and acting them out so they make sense. We also discuss how these concepts are applied to our daily lives all of the time!

Spelling: Students completed Test 18. I will have these at conferences. Test 19 is Thursday- students received the list last Monday.

Have a great weekend!
Laura Blowers 
 

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

FIELD TRIP: Most students enjoyed the symphony. It is a great experience for them to be in the DeVos hall and to listen to and watch a professional orchestra play. The group does a great job of involving the kids- and there are hundreds of them there! The cafeteria at Calvin was a huge hit! Pizza, french fries, hot dogs, salad bar, soup, sundae bar, desserts, slushies... Visiting the campus was also interesting as most have never seen what this is like.Thank you to all our parents who volunteered their time!
   My small camera wasn't working so I have no pictures! But we will be receiving some from Calvin, and I will post these to the blog then.

 
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: This week we continued review. Students will take the test over our first fraction unit on Friday, February 22nd. A study guide will be given on Wednesday. We will continue our unit in fraction operations.
  
Students are noticing that knowing math facts is increasingly helpful in the fractions units!


READING: We continue our Book Clubs. Our last day should be Friday. We will then begin our last genre unit, The Fighting Ground.

 
WRITING:   Students are working on their plans and drafts for their biographies. They are sorting their information into appropriate categories in their plans and then will begin to write their biographies. We have discussed writing inviting introductions. Hopefully I will have a new projector bulb by Monday so I am able to model writing their info into a draft!


SCIENCE:  We reviewed balanced and unbalanced forces this week and took a quiz over Lessons 1-4. We also began discussing how to measure force: The tool used is the spring scale and the unit of measure is called a Newton. Students conducted an investigation practicing measuring force and will expand on that lesson next week.

Spelling: Because of our short week, we just reviewed for spelling this week. Lesson 18 list will be sent home on Monday.

Have a great weekend!
Laura Blowers 
 

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!!