Thank you to everyone for taking the time to join us for our Heritage Celebration on November 22, 2013. It was a great success. I was very proud of each student and how hard they worked to develop their research for their presentations.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Monday, November 18, 2013
Newsletter
Wow, it is already November and we have been so very busy! We are getting into a routine and continue to work on developing good work habits. Please check your child's assignment pad and encourage them to utilize the assignment pad, homework folder and binder to keep themselves organized. In addition students may use the Google calendar (found in the HW and Assignments tab) to help them keep track of their assignments.
Thank you for supporting our community service project: Operation Gratitude. We were able to collect almost two full paper boxes of candy to send to our troops overseas. We are grateful to The Sports & Spinal Wellness Center for organizing the collection. The Sports & Spinal Wellness Center was able to collect over a 100 pounds of candy! We were entered into a raffle because of our participation in the collection and we won a $50.00 gift card to Toys-r-Us. We are thinking of buying some games to add to our word study activities.
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As you know, we will be going to the Bronx Zoo for our 5th grade field trip on Friday June 6th. Click on the icon below to check out the website and see all the amazing things we will be able to do at the Zoo.
When you visit school please take the opportunity to view the book advertisement projects displayed in the 5th grade hallway.
Thank you for supporting our community service project: Operation Gratitude. We were able to collect almost two full paper boxes of candy to send to our troops overseas. We are grateful to The Sports & Spinal Wellness Center for organizing the collection. The Sports & Spinal Wellness Center was able to collect over a 100 pounds of candy! We were entered into a raffle because of our participation in the collection and we won a $50.00 gift card to Toys-r-Us. We are thinking of buying some games to add to our word study activities.
We are starting our fundraising for this field trip today! Students should have come home with a packet of information about our fundraiser. We will be selling gift cards to Hoffman's car wash. Our fundraiser will run from today, Monday November 18th, through Friday, December 6th, car wash tickets will be sent home during the week of December 9th in time for your holiday gift giving. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at school or send an e-mail.
Each student read an independent book of their choice and then developed a book advertisement. The goal of this project was for students to utilize our Summary 5 Question strategy to create a summary that included specific details from the text to support their thinking. In addition to a summary students had to include a recommendation persuading other students to read their book. They had to create a poster that was eye-catching and would attract the attention of the reader. This was done by including a scene or illustration from the story. Then students presented their book advertisement to the class and were graded using the rubric below.
*Click on icon below to open Book Advertisement Rubric.
*Please encourage your child to use the Summary 5 Question strategy in their Homework reading log.
Summary 5 Questions
Who? Who is the main character? Who are the other important characters?
Wants what? The main character has to want something to make the story interesting. What does the main character want in the story?
But? But what happens? What gets in the way of the character getting what she or he wants? This is the problem of the story. It must eventually be resolved.
So? So what does the character do to try to solve the problem? What works for the character? What doesn’t?
Then? And then what happens? How is the problem solved? How does the story end?
During Read Aloud we are currently reading an amazing book called Gossamer by Lois Lowry. This book is written from serveral different character perspectives. It is a story that goes back and forth between the real world and a dream giving world. We are learning about how characters change over the course of a story and our goal is to think deeply about character motives. In Reader's Workshop, we are reading a new book called The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. It is a phenomial story told from the perspective of a gorilla. We are focusing our study on making inferences. We've had some discussions about what a character does and what they might be feeling or thinking that isn't stated specifically in the text. It is an engaging story that makes you think more deeply about the treatment of animals. The main character Ivan says very little so the reader has to "read between the lines" to fully understand what he is trying to say. We are utlizing a new strategy of listing the text and then writing what we think the character is trying to convey. Please click on the book icon below to see a format for our Deep Thinking Stop-n-Jots. Please encourage your child to utlize this strategy for their homework reading log.
In Writer's Workshop we wrote "Edge of your Seat" personal narratives. We read the mentor text, Shortcut by Donald Crews and learned that an edge of your seat personal narrative is short, suspenseful and has strong emotions We discussed foreshadowing and how to create tension in our writing to make it engaging to the reader.
We generated lists of strong emotions and feelings in our Writer's Notebooks. Then we chose some of those emotions and wrote about times when we felt those emotions. Many students wrote about times they were scared or anxious to do something, like ride a roller coaster. Their stories were engaging and exciting.
We are also in the process of working on ways to improve our writer's notebook entries. Many students are doing a great job of coming up with ideas for their entries. Now they need to focus on ways to stretch their writing by adding more details to enhance their thinking. Please encourage your child to make sure that they make more of an effort to use the writer's notebook rubric where they can find personal goals to improve their entries.
We are also in the process of working on ways to improve our writer's notebook entries. Many students are doing a great job of coming up with ideas for their entries. Now they need to focus on ways to stretch their writing by adding more details to enhance their thinking. Please encourage your child to make sure that they make more of an effort to use the writer's notebook rubric where they can find personal goals to improve their entries.
In Math we have finished working on division in Unit 2 of our Go Math program. We have learned several different ways to to divide, including long division, dividing using base-ten blocks, and partial quotients. With long division we have focused on an acronym: DMSB which means Dirty Monkeys Smell Bad. Which breaks down the steps of long division as Divide, Multiply, Subtract and Bring down. We are also encouraging students to use a sheet of lined paper (flipped sideways) so they can use the lines to create columns to keep their work organized and neat. If they do this, then they will make fewer careless errors.
We are also working on our test taking skills each week with the math quiz. Students should continue to double check all of their work to make sure they are correct. We learned to multiply the quotient by the divisor to check our division problems. This takes time and often students are rushing and will not take the extra step to check their work. I continue to insist to students how important it is that they get their work correct not just completed.
We are currently working on Unit 3 of our Go Math program which focuses on decimals. We learned how to identify place value to the thousandths. We also have reviewed how to compare decimals and order them from least to greatest. Please encourage your child to utilize the strategies we are using in class, rewrite the decimals lining up the decimal points and then compare each place value. Often they like to do this quickly and just look at the numbers but not truly identify the place values to make comparisons. We reviewed rounding of decimal numbers and discussed the rule of "5 or more add one more" and if it is less than five, we leave it alone. We focused on adding and subtracting decimals. Although, this seems like an easy task, often students make careless errors in basic addition and subtraction. Please remind them to be thoughtful and check their work for mistakes.
We are currently working on Unit 3 of our Go Math program which focuses on decimals. We learned how to identify place value to the thousandths. We also have reviewed how to compare decimals and order them from least to greatest. Please encourage your child to utilize the strategies we are using in class, rewrite the decimals lining up the decimal points and then compare each place value. Often they like to do this quickly and just look at the numbers but not truly identify the place values to make comparisons. We reviewed rounding of decimal numbers and discussed the rule of "5 or more add one more" and if it is less than five, we leave it alone. We focused on adding and subtracting decimals. Although, this seems like an easy task, often students make careless errors in basic addition and subtraction. Please remind them to be thoughtful and check their work for mistakes.
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