Working With Our Buddies

Last Friday, we worked with Mrs. Gariboldi's students on a special Halloween project.  Below are a few photos from this activity.

Week of Oct. 22

                It was great to have so many families participate in last week’s Open House on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday evening.  The students were all so excited about sharing what they have been learning.  They have been working hard and should be proud of their progress during the first quarter.

                November 12^th, the date that the district has set for parent/teacher conferences, is just around the corner.  Please look for a sign-up sheet in this week’s Friday folder.   Traditionally, I have offered times during the designated conference day, as well as one evening. I look forward to talking about your child’s progress during this time.

                We are coming to the end of our unit on personal narratives during writing workshop.  This week, our focus was on self-editing and providing positive feedback to classmates about their narrative pieces.  Next week, we will begin our post assessment narrative pieces.

                The reading block has focused on summaries, theme, and supporting our thinking with evidence from the text.  In fourth and fifth grade, students are expected to identify a theme of a story and support their thinking with several details from the text.  They are also expected to provide a complete summary of the story.   On Wednesday, we read Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester Laminack.  Students were then asked to identify what lesson or “big idea” about life they felt the author was trying to teach us in this book.  We will be sharing our thoughts on Friday in a class discussion.

                On Monday, students heard the story In November by Cynthia Rylant.  This short picture book is filled with descriptive words and figurative language about the month of November.  Students were then asked to create a watercolor about something they like about November.  Some have started writing the next piece of poetry – an acrostic poem.

                Fifth graders have continued their math unit on volume and surface area of a rectangular prism.  Most students have finished building their robots out of cardstock, calculating the volume of each body part and the total volume of their robot.  We have now moved into how we calculate the surface area of a rectangular prism. 

                Students have continued on their autobiography map project.  We should be finishing these by early next week.

                On Friday afternoon, we will be meeting with our kindergarten buddies to complete a special Halloween craft.  Be sure to ask your child about this activity!

                Have a wonderful weekend! 

Week of Oct. 8th

     

Although this has been a short week, it has been a busy one.  We have completed a project in technology class using Canva.  Canva is a visual presentation tool accessed via a web application.  Students began with a planner, recording various information about themselves.  Topics included many of our favorites: song, food, animal, book, color, etc.  They then practiced responsible online behavior, by using something other than our name on the poster.  Students chose a superhero name or a name that combined a color and an animal. After completing the posters, students practiced giving thoughtful feedback to each other.  The completed posters will be on display in our classroom next week for Open House.  

Although we had previously worked on writing individual “Hopes and Dreams” for this year, we had not edited these pieces to produce a final draft.  These pieces are a component of the Responsive Classroom.  Students wrote about what they are looking forward to in school this year.  In writing block this week, we worked to finish these pieces for display next week.  We also participated in a mini lesson about the use of dialogue in narratives.  We discussed elaboration as we read, Thundercake by Patricia Polacco.  The young girl in this book describes how her grandmother helped her overcome her fear of thunderstorms.  Students have all started a personal narrative about a time that they were scared about something. 

Students will be bringing home information in their Friday folders about a fundraiser that the 4/5 classes will be participating in to help raise money for our anticipated fieldtrip to Ft. Ticonderoga next spring. This fieldtrip will connect to our Global Studies unit on the Revolutionary War. 

The fundraiser is Solmate socks.  If you don’t know the company you can check out their story at this link:  Http://www.socklady.com/sockstory.php  The money for the socks should be collected when you take the orders.  The socks make great presents.  They also ship well and are light, if you need to mail any presents.  More details will be included in the packet sent home.

On Thursday, thirteen members of our class traveled to U-32 for a day of music. Everyone was quite excited when they returned to school around 3:00.  The ten students that remained at EMES joined Mrs. Gannon’s students in the afternoon for some collaborative work.  First, we broke into small groups for an activity that covered two of our Science Performance Indicators (3c which covers supporting an argument that gravitational force exerted on objects on Earth is directed down and PI 5 which covers Engineering).  The challenge involved teams designing a roller coaster for a new theme park in town.  The models were made with foam tubes, masking tape, a cup, and a marble.  This activity also addressed the transferable Performance Indicator that covers working collaboratively.  For approximately an hour, students were engaged in designing, building, and then testing their team’s ideas. 

The second activity involved our class teaching Mrs. Gannon’s students watercolor techniques they have learned in our Monday poetry sessions.  It was great to see my students eagerly sharing what they have learned.

Please remember that our classroom will be open from 5:30 – 6:30 on next Monday and Wednesday for those families that are able to come see some of what we have been learning this year.  The room will also be open on next Thursday, during the school Open House.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Week of Oct. 1st

  Mrs. Shedd’s Newsletter

Week of Oct. 1, 2018

Thanks so much to all the families that responded to my short survey about Open House and homework. The vote was evenly divided on which date to hold an Open House for my classroom.  I have decided to be at school on both evenings (Monday, Oct. 15^th and Wed., Oct. 17^th).  My classroom will be open from 5:30 – 6:30 each of the evenings to accommodate your schedules.  If however, you prefer to come on the school’s Open House, I will arrange for the room to be open. 

I would also like to thank everyone for their thoughtful comments regarding homework.  Our unit (grades 4-6) has discussed homework at EMES and has agreed to the following purpose statement:

Homework is intended to support and strengthen student learning.   It helps teach responsibility as well as accountability, and should be completed independently by the student.  Homework provides connections between a student’s family and school, and can offer insight in regard to what children are learning.

We have also agreed to certain things such as no homework will be assigned on Friday, all materials required for homework assignments should be available to students, assignment books will be supplied and used, and there should be a homework continuum across EMES.

This week our class continues a unit on narrative writing.  During the unit, we have had mini lessons on crafting fiction leads. Students have learned that a good lead should grab the audience.  We have looked at a variety of leads including beginning with action, dialogue, a sound effect, a snapshot of the setting, and more.  We have also looked at elaboration and the importance of dialogue in a narrative.  We examined our narrative writing checklist to discover where dialogue is referenced (such as in the ending, in craft, in elaboration, etc.)  On Wednesday, we read My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco, as we studied dialogue tags.  We recorded the variety of tags that Polacco used throughout this picture book.

During our poetry block, we have learned about the haiku.  We read samples of this unrhymed Japanese poem of three lines that contains five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.  We also learned that a haiku is usually light and delicate in feeling and is frequently involving something lovely in nature, especially the season of the year.  Students have completed a watercolor of something in nature and have written rough drafts of a haiku.

During the past two weeks, we have met with our kindergarten buddies on Friday afternoon.  The 4^th/5^th graders practiced fluency skills as they shared picture books with their buddies.  They also played math games together.

Fifth graders have been learning about perimeter and area this week in math class.  On Tuesday, we explored why area is recorded in square units.  Wednesday, we began to create two dimensional robots with a total area of 120 square units.  Students recorded the area for each body part.

Have a wonderful weekend!