Friday 12/1/17

Here are a few highlights from the past week:

Before the Thanksgiving Break we had a fantastic Four Winds Lesson on rotting logs! We got to draw, dig through, and explore inside one. Thanks to Charlotte and Susan.
Also before the break, students had earned a Bear Paw Celebration, so we had an afternoon of games. Half the time students played either Monopoly or Life, then the other half of the time they played games on the computers!
In Reading Workshop, all students are enjoying their independent reading books. Students are currently working on a mini book project to practice their summarizing skills.
We are almost done 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, all students have finished brainstorming ideas for controlled experiments and wrote a few potential testable questions. On Friday, everyone chose a final project idea and refined the questions.
This week we continued our personal narrative writing unit. Students are working right now on strategies for generating good stories for these as well as strategies to write stories that make the reader feel like they're experiencing the story. 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!
We began Word Study this week. There are two groups, but one of the groups will split into two some weeks. Every 7 days students will get a new list of words that focus on a spelling pattern. They have word study time most days which may include: sorting words, word searches, lessons with me, partner word sorting, games on Spelling City, searching for words that follow the current pattern in their own writing and their books, and more. We will be building in vocabulary in the future.
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.
Outdoor Learning was back this week! We started a several week study of mapping, direction, compass work and orienteering, etc... This week was focused on using compasses outdoors to both determine direction and travel in specific directions.
We spent time reflecting on the trimester and beginning to look at goals to work on for the second trimester.
Green Sheets came home this week, be sure to look at the back to see their testable questions for their science experiment. Some have more understanding of what their project will look like than others, we will be doing lots more planning next week.

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

Early Release Day- Friday 12/8/17
*** 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 have boots, a coat, a hat, and warm/waterproof gloves or mittens. Snow pants are now necessary on Outdoor Learning days (even without snow- so they can stay warm all afternoon). ***
In Reading Workshop, students will continue independent reading. They will also continue to work on their summarizing book project.
We will continue with math rotations in small groups.
We will spend time planning, researching, and starting controlled experiments!
In Outdoor Learning we will continue our work mapping and using compasses. This will connect with some geography and mapping studies we will be doing in class in the coming months.
In Writing Workshop we will continue with Personal Narratives. Later this coming week or early the week after, everyone will choose one story to bring to final draft form.
We will continue Word Study work.
We will continue to use the Smarties activity to help us do some goal setting work for the year.