REMINDERS
- Winter Wellness starts on Tuesday this week. Please make sure your child comes with all appropriate outside clothing.
- Tuesdays and Fridays are our P.E. days. Students should have appropriate footwear and should come prepared to go outside if the weather is good.
This week begins the new Reteach session. This session will last for 12 weeks and meet
4 days/week for 30 minutes. There will
be four different groups in the fifth/sixth grade unit. Two of these groups will focus on math skills
– one group for each grade. A third
group will work on reading skills, beginning with a focus on comparing and
contrasting.
I will have a group of students that will work on personal
interest projects using the following district transferable skills Performance
Indicators to guide us.
Skill 2: EFFECTIVE AND EXPRESSIVE COMMUNICATION (5th/6th
grade cluster)
a. Demonstrate organized and purposeful
communication.
d. Use a variety of ways to
express ideas.
Skill 4: WORKING INDEPENDENTLY AND COLLABORATIVELY (5th/6th
grade cluster)
b. Demonstrate organization, including time
management skills and spatial
organization.
d. Demonstrate accountability through timely
task completion.
Skill 5: INFORMED, INTEGRATED, AND CRITICAL THINKING
(5th/6th grade cluster)
a. Integrate Information gathered from active
reading, speaking, and listening.
b. Apply knowledge from various disciplines
and contexts across settings.
d. Analyze the accuracy, bias, and usefulness
of information as well as acknowledge and understand biases, assumptions,
privileges.
Skill 6: SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-DIRECTION (5th/6th
grade cluster)
a. Identify and actively pursue interests in
preparation for lifelong learning and growth.
d. Discover and cultivate interests that lead
to future planning.
These projects will encourage creativity, promote inquiry, problem
solving, and perseverance, among other lifelong skills. The projects will have the following
guidelines:
1.
Projects will be inquiry based. Students will need to create a contract or
plan, communicating what they want to learn about and why.
2.
Projects will be research based. Whatever topic students choose, research on
the topic must be involved.
3.
Projects will be shared. Each student will present their final
project.
We will spend the first week learning about the above referenced
transferable skills Performance Indicators, what it means to be proficient in
each skill, completing a self-assessment on these skills, and then
brainstorming possible topics for our personal interest projects.
Library/Reading
Last week, students learned about the new focus for Library class. We will be working to practice oral reading
fluency skills. In class during the
reading block, we reviewed the criteria used for fluency on the district DRA
reading assessment. We looked at the
four level rubric that students are scored on.
There are also four categories under oral reading fluency that students
receive a score on (accuracy, rate, phrasing, and expression).
In Library class, Arlyn modeled reading aloud and each student used the
sixth grade rubric to assess her in the areas of accuracy, phrasing, and
expression. Then students selected a
traditional literature story that they will practice to read aloud. This week, we will learn how to video each
other, read the stories selected, and begin to self-assess in the areas of
accuracy, phrasing, and expression.
Students also continue to work on their personal reading goals each day
during the reading block.
Writing
We continue our unit on informational writing. Students have now selected a science
topic (ie. volcanoes, earthquakes, plate
tectonics, etc.) that they have started researching for their post assessment
pieces. We will continue to work on
these pieces for the next couple of weeks.
In preparation for this, we have been reviewing the components of an
informational piece, as well as text features of nonfiction.
Math
In fifth grade math, we continue our work on decimals (to the
thousandths). During the past week and a
half, students have worked on two larger projects using decimals and
fractions. First, students worked on
“Decimal Gardens: Flowers and
Vegetables.” This activity involved
designing gardens on graph paper, recording the various flowers and vegetables
in decimals and in fractions, and then comparing the flower/vegetable types
using >, <, or =.
The second project is titled, “Check This.” Students have been recording transactions in
the family checkbook register, choosing the correct operation for each
transaction. They are hoping that they
will have enough money left at the end of the 2nd week to purchase
an Xbox One for the family. We will be
finishing this activity on Monday.
Theme
As part of our unit on Explorers and the Age of Discovery,
students have participated in a simulation from Scholastic. Students have taken on a role of a character
living through this period of history. They
have worked together in groups using problem-solving skills to deal with challenges
that these brave individuals faced. Each
student has kept a log of their experiences.
We will be finishing the simulation this week. Our next unit of study will bring us up to
the early 1600s as we learn about life in the thirteen colonies.
