On Tuesday the fifth
grade classes had a guest speaker, Larry Clarfeld, from the North Branch Nature
Center. He taught us about Vernal pools and the amazing creatures that
use these temporary pools to lay their eggs. He showed us slides that
covered the life cycle of the wood frog, the Amphibian Monitoring Program
(AMP), and more. We learned how to identify the Spotted salamander, a
common creature found in Vermont. These creatures are part of a group of
mole salamanders and can live 20 or more years! We also learned about the
Blue-spotted salamander, the Jefferson salamander, the Blue-spotted - Jefferson
Hybrid, the Eastern Newt and more. Larry shared slides of Vermont's frogs
and toads. We listened to the sounds of some of these fascinating
amphibians.
In writing workshop
this week we have started our unit on Opinion writing. This unit is designed to teach students to be
more persuasive in their pieces, to weigh evidence, and to draw evidenced-based
conclusions. It will include the
research and organizational skills of our last unit on informational
writing. We have also continued our work
on narratives this week as we work to finish our “winter activity” watercolor
illustrated narrative.
In
math this week we have started preparing for the SBAC tests that our class will
be taking on May 5, 6, 7, 12, and 14. It is important that students try to be here
on those days. We will continue to work on preparing for these tests the week
that we return. Our focus then will be
on the literacy portion of the SBACs.
We
have also started working on fractions.
Students have worked on equivalent fractions, comparing fractions,
adding/subtracting like fractions and are starting to work on
adding/subtracting unlike fractions. On
Thursday students reviewed skills from earlier this week including adding,
subtracting, multiplying whole numbers and add/subtracting decimals.
In
Social Studies we continue to learn about Colonial America. Through read aloud of nonfiction text we have
recently covered school, work, food, farming, science and medicine. Students were asked to create a poster for
homework that was due on Thursday.
Friday afternoon students shared their posters with the class.
Hope
everyone has a wonderful Spring break.
I’m hoping for some warm, sunny weather!
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