Friday 11/17/17

Here are a few highlights from the past week:

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've shared pictures... Click here for photos from October/November 2017.
In Reading Workshop, all students are enjoying their independent reading books. This week was light on reading, due to all the other things we were doing!
We continued with our first read aloud book: Wonder, by RJ Palacio. It's about a 5th grade boy who has a severe facial deformity and is headed to school for the first time in his life. The book has some wonderful lessons about acceptance, different points of view, and choosing kindness. It's one of my favorite read alouds to start the year.
In Math, we continued small group rotation work. Right now, we have 3 groups- two 5th grade groups and one 6th grade group. All groups rotate between a small group lesson with me, independent work, and math games or other work with Mr. K (our paraeducator). Our units right now:
In Science, we finished our discussions about our Scientific Practices and Inquiry unit. Students had time to work on a final packet with questions about the unit as well as some drawing about their own interpretation of things learned in the unit. Students also had time on Friday to brainstorm ideas for their controlled experiments!
This week we began a personal narrative writing unit. Students are working right now on strategies for generating good stories for these. Each day I start with a short read aloud to get us thinking, then do a minilesson to teach a strategy or element of writing, then students have writing time. Each day we also do sharing, sometimes just what we wrote about, sometimes about the writing process, and sometimes reading aloud our writing!
On Tuesday, students helped unpack supplies the school bought for a "kitchen cart"! In the afternoon we broke into small groups, developed a recipe together, and then made batter for a carrot cake/bread for Harvest Lunch! It turned out great!
On Wednesday, all students were at Chorus Day at Hazen!
Thursday was our Harvest Lunch at school. We spent time in the morning helping Chef plate pie and the cake/bread, and making a display for the veggies grown at school. Also, the students and I helped to serve the meal! It was great to see some of you there on Thursday.
Since we had so much going on this week and students were gone all day Wednesday, we did not have Outdoor Learning.
All students are continuing their weekly independent typing instruction, using typing.com. This involves lessons and games to help strengthen typing skills.
For the 3rd year in a row, our school has received a grant from Kids on the Move, which allows us to offer extra opportunities for movement! This year we are excited to have Joni back to do dance classes every Thursday afternoon. This program will run for 8-10 weeks.
Green Sheets came home this week, there won't be any next week.

Some upcoming dates, important notes, and things to look forward to in the coming weeks:

No School: Thanksgiving Break- Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 11/22-11/24/17
*** Cold weather has arrived!!! Please be sure to start sending kids with warm gear for recess and other outdoor time! This time of year they should at least have boots, a coat, a hat, and gloves or mittens. Snow pants will need to start coming in soon too. ***
Congratulations to the 5/6 Class for reaching their goal of 25 Bear Paws! Students have voted to celebrate with an afternoon of games next Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving break..
In Reading Workshop, students will continue independent reading. We will be doing a small book project when we return from Thanksgiving break.
We will continue with math rotations in small groups.
Now that we are done with our controlled experiment, that finishes up our learning about scientific practices and inquiry. The final piece of this unit will be an independent learning project which will give students an opportunity to plan and carry out their OWN controlled experiment. We will do more planning next week and hopefully start them soon after the week after Thanksgiving.
We will not have Outdoor Learning next week, but will have Four Winds on Monday!
In Writing Workshop we will continue with Personal Narratives.
I've been pushing off Word Study while I wait for some materials. I hope to have them next week, so I should be able to start after the Thanksgiving break. This will include both spelling and vocabulary work! This will be through a combination of small group work and independent work. We will be using Spelling City for some of this independent practice.
We will continue to use the Smarties activity to help us do some goal setting work for the year.