January 28, 2018

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 (5^th/6^th grade cluster)

a.       Demonstrate organized and purposeful communication.

d.    Use a variety of ways to express ideas.

Skill 4:  WORKING INDEPENDENTLY AND COLLABORATIVELY (5^th/6^th 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 (5^th/6^th 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 (5^th/6^th 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 2^nd 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.