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. We will be sending home information about our 5th grade fundraiser and Heritage project next week.
In Math we have started 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 have finished reading Wow, Canada by Vivien Bowers and have learned so much about each province and territory. We focused on pulling out the relevant factual information from each chapter using our F.Q.R. strategy. F. Q. R. stands for Fact, Question, Response and encourages students to actively read for meaning. Then we worked on creating guided notes and deciding what the Big Ideas were from each chapter. Then students were to independently study the Big Idea sheets and guided notes to prepare for the Canada quizzes.
Currently we are reading A World in Focus by John-Paul Bianchi, which is a non-fiction textbook. So we are focusing on using the features of non-fiction to enhance our understanding of the text. Having read Wow, Canada gives the students some prior knowledge about Canada making the non-fiction text easier to comprehend.
The Canada projects were due on Wednesday November 7th and I was very excited to see what they created and researched. This independent project allowed each student to develop some research skills that will assist them in future projects. Students will be graded using the rubric below. My goal is that students will look at the rubrics from the Book Advertisement and Canada project to help develop goals for improvement on the various other projects that we will do this year.
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| Click on the Flag to access the Rubric. |
Example of some projects:
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| Wayne Gretzky by: Nicholas B. |
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| The Group of Seven by Rosie |
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| Winter Olympics Calgary, Alberta |
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| Native Canadian Tepee by Hannah |
We have just finished working through the writing process with our personal narratives. First we developed strategies to generate personal narrative ideas in our writer's notebooks. Once of those strategies was to list a person and then list moments with that person. Another strategy was to list a place and then list moments in that place. We then chose one of those ideas to write about and wrote that personal narrative in our writer's notebooks. After we generated several different ideas for our personal narratives we chose one from our writer's notebook to develop with the writing process.
- Plan out ideas using an outline or web.
- Draft out story following the plan.
- Edit draft
- Conference & Revise writing
- Publish (type final copy)
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.
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