I hope everyone enjoyed a relaxing and fun winter break! It was great to hear so many great stories of the adventures many went on! We hit the ground running on Monday as we dug right in where we left off!
We had our Peer Leaders from Norwell High School spend their last visit with us. We role played some different situations and discussed how to be assertive with our communication when someone is not treating us the way they should. The importance of letting know how their actions make us feel was a great lesson for all! We were lucky to have these leaders with us this year! In reading, we have been working with story elements and concentrating on finding the theme of our stories. We read excerpts and discussed that sometimes there can be more than one theme or lesson learned. We are getting ready to kick off our Picture Book March Madness on Monday. For each day of March we will read one picture book and find the story elements (setting, character, plot, conflict and theme). We have lot of books sharing information about different cultures, this was a ton of fun last year and I can't wait to enjoy some new titles with students this year! Students will be keeping a daily log for each title, the log will come home at the end of the month so you can see the many different titles we read and discussed! We all finished up The War That Saved My Life! Many students are requesting to read the sequel which is a great sign! Next week, partners will be working on creating a game to represent the key characters and events from the story and then we will have some time to play each others' games. In Writing, we kicked off our unit on Opinion/Argument Writing. We discussed the question "Should chocolate milk be served in school". Students read articles from both sides of the argument and watched a few videos. We talked about the importance of looking at the source/author of the article in case we notice any bias. Students are now looking at 4 different topics and will choose one to take through the full process of stating a claim and backing it up with good evidence. Students now realize the importance of not just arguing their side, but looking at the counterargument as well! I can't wait to really dig in next week! Mrs. Fuller, our literacy coordinator, is helping to guide us through this unit. We always love when her expertise is shared with our classroom of writers! In Science, we have looked at the sources of water on Earth and this week we focused on the water cycle. Students have made connections back to our unit on Matter as we talked about water changing from a liquid to a vapor during the evaporation process! We also finished up our discussion about how our landscape can change through fast (ex, earthquake, mudslide) or slow processes (wind erosion, waves, water erosion). Looking forward to digging in to our discussions even more next week! In Math, this week we were all about multiplying fractions and learning how to draw models of the different types of equations. Students learned how to recognize the difference of a whole x fraction compared to a fraction x whole and also did some work with fraction x fraction models! Great job so far! Next week we will be getting into multiplying mixed numbers! Proud of their effort so far! In Social Studies, we are circling back to some work we did earlier this year on the original colonies. Students will be working on a short 90sec commercial to entice new settlers to choose their region. We will be creating and recording our "commercials" to state the case for either the New England, Middle or Southern Colonies. We will be using some new technology, and I am looking forward to what they come up with! Links will be shared on our webpage once final projects are complete! Next Thursday is our Literacy Night from 6:30-7:45! I am hoping to see many students enjoying different read alouds, bringing in gently used books to exchange for new material and participating in the raffles! Please mark your calendars for a fun night! On Monday, during our Community Meeting, we will, as a community be celebrating Read Aloud Day (Dr. Seuss's birthday) by all reading together for 10 minutes. Classroom doors have been decorated, so be sure to take a walk through the school - lots of creativity! On Thursday, students may opt to dress as their favorite storybook character (they can wear to Literacy Night as well!) Have a wonderful weekend! I cannot believe MARCH is here!! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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We certainly have lots to celebrate tomorrow! A few weeks back we hit the reset button and have been working hard to work BETTER TOGETHER! Students showed that when they put their mind to it, they are capable of great things! We met our goal and will celebrate with a cozy mix-it-up day tomorrow. We will be watching Wonder, reminding ourselves as we move into February vacation week that is always important to be kinder than necessary! It is my hope after they all shine so brightly and dare greatly tonight at the Variety Show that they will remember to choose kindness whenever possible! I am challenging them tomorrow to see how many Random Acts of Kindness they can complete over break so we can have a great sharing session when we return! We did a great job on our assessment of adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators as well as fraction line plots. Students were challenged by multi-select type questions, but rose to the occasion by taking their time and showing their work! Proud of their efforts! We are starting multiplication and division of fractions, with our initial focus being on multiplying whole numbers by fractions. We will look at models, repeated addition and how we use fractions in word problems. Throughout multiplication and division we will be working hard with improper and mixed fractions! I am excited to dig into these concepts with students! Tonight, their Friday folders came home a day early and they should also have a yellow folder which has their final narrative piece along with all of their drafts. Please be sure to have your child show you their initial draft and explain the many ways they worked hard to make it better! I was really pleased with their progress as they added stronger verbs, more vivid adjectives, better transitions, dialogue and even came up with some creative titles to hook their readers in! After break we will be moving into Opinion Essays. Students will be given a few topics to choose from and then will learn about arguments and counterarguments! I cannot wait! We have been working hard to draw conclusions and make inferences in our reading and today I put together a simulation for our class. We became Norwell CSI and reviewed evidence at a make shift crime scene in Mrs. Burns's office and then interview notes on our 6 suspects. Working in teams, we looked at all of the clues and found the culprit! Miss Marr will be "dealt" with tomorrow! Please be sure to ask your child about this! Tons of fun learning going on! In Science, we built some graphs around the Distribution of Water on Earth. Students were stunned when they realized almost 97.5% of ALL the water on Earth is salt. We then looked at the 2.5% and what the sources were and graphed those as well. We will be looking at conservation and ways we can impact our water usage when we return from break. We will also be digging further into the Water Cylcle and how weather patterns impact all of this! We have so much to cover together this year, so get some rest over break and be ready to hit the ground running! Wishing everyone a restful and healthy break! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday all!
We had such a fantastic week sharing so many wonderful picture books and chapters from favorite novels together. So many of you were able to come in and share your love of reading and we all appreciate it so very much! Be sure to check out the photo gallery as I tried to capture as much as I could! We also finished, Mr. Terupt Falls Again, be sure to ask your child what they thought of the different twists and turns in this book. Who was their favorite character in this sequel? Had it changed from the first book Because of Mr. Terupt? If they did enjoy a different character this time, ask them to explain why! Our focus this week has been on drawing conclusions. Using clues in our texts to infer answers to questions about the setting, problem or events in the short stories we dug into. Students are asked to be thinking about this as they are finishing up The War that Saved My Life. I have been very impressed by the connections they have been making, not only to the characters in this book but to other books and events we have read about this year. GREAT WORK! In Math, this week we dug into Line Plots, specifically ones using fractions! Students did a nice job finding and using efficient strategies to add lots of fractions (finding pairs that add to whole numbers etc). Dividing number lines into fractions is challenging to many, this will be something we continue to work on as we move to multiplication and division after February break. We will explain what we have learned in a flipgrid, which I will share with you next week. We will also take an assessment to show what we know, as well as areas weare still developing! Nice effort by all! In writing, we put the finishing touches on our Narratives. We would like to invite you to our classroom next Thursday, February 13th from 8:30-9:00am to celebrate this accomplishment. Come and let us show you all of our drafts and how we pulled them apart to add dialogue and detail to make them something we are proud of! In Science, we are taking a deeper look at the Earth's systems. We reviewed the layers of the Earth and atmosphere and are now talking about the water cycle and how weather impacts changes to our Earth's surface. Great work so far! I think students are always amazed to hear how little fresh water we have on Earth! We will be able to work on our graphing skills within this Science unit as we graph % of salt vs fresh water and then also graph where we would find fresh water. Lots of great discussions are going on! A reminder that our compliment hearts are due on Monday. Please be sure they come to school signed by your child and in a ziploc bag so we will be ready to distribute on Friday! Friday is also our 100th day of school, which means the 1000th day for 5th graders (K-4 = 180 x 5 years = 900 + 100 this year = 1000!!!). Can you believe it?! We are celebrating with Mix It Up Day ! Our student government reps will be helping to facilitate table discussions with "mixed up tables". We are hoping students will have some great conversations with students they may not know and may realize they have many things in common with these new friends! To celebrate, we will also be wearing mixed up clothes. So get out your stripes, plaids and florals and MIX IT UP! Should be tons of fun! Thank you all for sending in more glue sticks and kleenex, we definitely have had some stuffy noses over the past few months and quickly went through most of our supply! We appreciate your generosity! Have a wonderful weekend! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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March 2020
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