This week was jam-packed with new content to kick off fifth grade! The students adjusted very well and we are ready to tackle the rest of the year. Reader's Workshop In Reader's Workshop, we are starting a brand new unit about analyzing underlying themes from literature books. Monday was a day for them to show what they already know about themes and on Tuesday, they set their own reading goals. Wednesday was the first day where we started talking about how to identify themes by writing about our reading. Writer's Workshop The first unit for Writer's Workshop is all about how to write narratives. This week was all about generating different ideas for their own personal narratives and we ended the week on Friday talking about how to tell the story from the main character's point of view. As we continue with the unit, their stories will get longer and you will feel like you were there too! Math Chapter one of math is all about place value, multiplication and expressions. This week, we looked at the different place values and their names while writing numbers in expanded form to determine each place's value. After this, we moved onto the different properties of multiplication and addition and how they can be used in different expressions. Finally, the students got to work with Mrs. Destin (my substitute) on Thursday to find patterns between exponents and the number of zeroes in a number. Science Continuing on with our Space Science unit, we explored how the Earth moves around the sun by modeling with our own bodies. In doing this, we were able to see how the rotation of Earth affects the time of day for both people in the Bay Area, and people on the opposite side of the world. On Wednesday, we moved on and the students got to participate in a design challenge. Their instructions were to make a device that can accurately tell the time (within 5 minutes) for us in Saratoga. They were given a paper plate and a toothpick and they came up with very innovative ideas.
Next Step Recommendations
At home, have your child try a journal entry about a book they are reading and come up with a theme for either a chapter or the whole book. Remind them that the journal entries should not be summaries of the book, they should be main ideas or concepts that they got from reading the story. As an enrichment for math, the students can start working with money to help them solidify their understanding of place value. Try asking them to count up some change for you, or give them larger amounts of money to break down to "help you with accounting".
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This was the first full week of fifth grade! We started getting into more content and included some fun activities.
Reading This week, Reader's Workshop was a review of major reading strategies that help us retain what we read. We talked about picturing the words in your mind, activating prior knowledge, making connections, and inferring what will happen next. The students had time to practice these with their own books while I went around and had them read out loud to me to check their fluency. Writing Earlier in the week, the students took a pre-assessment to get ready for our upcoming writing unit: narrative writing. Next week, we will start our workshops on for the unit. The students also got the chance to explore article writing! They wrote articles about what they are most proud of or like the best about themselves. Math This week was all about reviewing the math learned last year. We completed a math coloring page, solved a "math mystery", played math jeopardy, and got more practice with math centers. Next week, we will start chapter 1 of our first math unit! Science In science, we explored why scientists know so much and why it is so hard to make new inventions. We helped "save Bobby" by folding paper to break the fall of a bobby pin (we used paper clips instead to make it a little harder). Extras In addition to the core subjects, we made paper mosaics for art, practiced our "number talks" for our math warmup, and worked through both a health lesson and growth mindset lesson. Next week, I will start using Seesaw more for in the moment photos and updates of what we are doing. To prepare for math, review place value concepts and multiplying two double-digit numbers. From now on, we will be moving faster through the lessons and there will be more content learned each week; get ready for fifth grade! The first two days in fifth grade were great! On the first day, we got to know a little more about each other and played some "get to know you" games. We also started working on our class contract and the students came up with different rules they think would be beneficial for a productive learning environment. On day two, we got started on an art project using oil pastels to learn even more information about each other. After recess, we got started on a fun math project. The students filled out a questionnaire on Thursday that we used to collect data on Friday. Using the data we collected, the students were asked to make a graph of some of the information. We talked about what elements are included in graphs, different types of graphs that are used, and how to present information. After lunch, we made "Venn Heads" to see what similarities and differences there were between us and a partner. We reviewed what a Venn diagram is and how they can be used to separate similarities and differences. At the end of the day, we had our "Fun Friday", which is a chance for the students to practice cooperation and social skills. This week, we did it indoors and the students played board games and card games with each other to finish of the day.
Overall, it was a great first week and I look forward to the year ahead. Next week, we will start getting into more content heavy lessons and review some of the topics learned in fourth grade. |
AuthorUpdates on the class will occur regularly and you can check back here to see what's happening at school. Archives
March 2020
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