friday 1/18/19

Here are a few highlights from the last week:

  • In reading students continued Book Clubs. Two groups have finished their books and are doing a few culminating activities and two groups are still reading. Students also had independent reading time most days.
  • We continued with math rotations this week. One group worked on unit pricing and began to learn about percents. One group worked on dividing fractions. And one group did a lot of work with division.
  • Also in math, students are using the Freckle program to do math fact practice and other skill practice. A 5th grade group is also using a new game called Fogstone Island!
  • In social studies, we are full into the US Geography unit! Students did a post-assessment for the Northeast region and were able to see their growth from the week before. Then we moved on to a pre-assessment for the Midwest. They spent the rest of the week studying states and capitals using a variety of strategies: flashcards and other self/partner quizzing, an iPad game called "Stack the States", other online games, whole class Kahoot quizzes, word searches, worksheets, etc...
  • Also in social studies, we watched the first part of a documentary called "How the States got their Shapes" (which was later turned into a television series). We will probably watch it in 3-4 parts. It explored a lot of US History and how many of our states came to be and why the borders are where they are.
  • On Wednesday, we were able to do a short Outdoor Learning and got out to our trees! We spent about 45 minutes outside.
  • On Thursday, I introduced our persuasive/argument writing unit. We read a picture book, talked about persuasive techniques in it, and then spent time writing and talking about various "would you rather" scenarios.
  • Green sheets came home this week!


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

  • No School- MLK Day: Monday 1/21/19
  • XC Skiing at Craftsbury Outdoor Center: Thursday 1/24/19 Roughly 830-1130 (back for lunch)
  • Winter Celebration of Learning and Arts Showcase/Concert and Tuesday 1/29/19: 530-615- Celebration 615-7- Concert
  • *** Cold and snowy weather has arrived!!! Please be sure to start sending kids with warm gear for recess and other outdoor time like Outdoor Learning! This time of year they should have snowpants, a coat, a hat, gloves or mittens, and boots (be sure they have indoor shoes for during the day). ***


  • We will continue with our cafeteria waste station redesign. The plan is to build a prototype and test it out for a bit...
  • We will continue with book clubs! 2 of the groups will be finishing their books and doing some response with that. 2 of the groups will continue reading for a few more weeks.
  • We will continue with independent reading and students will begin doing some work with reading response, using these new reading strategies.
  • We will be setting some reading goals for this second trimester (we ran out of time last week).
  • We will continue talking about argumentative/persuasive writing. Doing work together as a class leading up to a writing piece to be finished in mid-February.
  • We will continue our math units (Percents, Fraction division, and Division/word problems). I will continue to run 3 math groups on a rotation schedule. One rotation is a lesson with me. One rotation is work and games based on that lesson or current math topics. One rotation will vary depending on the day and may include: word work (vocab/spelling), writing, reading response, typing instruction, independent project work, etc...
  • We will continue with our US Geography unit! All students will be working weekly to learn the states in a different region of the United States. We will do one region a week for 5 weeks. Some students will learn states, some will learn capitals (if they already know the states), and some will do a combination of both. While doing this, they'll learn some geography, history, and more about each region. After a week or so, we will add the Road Trip project, more to come on this soon...
  • We will assess the Midwest either Tuesday or Wednesday and do a quick additional learning of the Great Lakes.