Plans Week of March 16th, 2015

Students analyzing copies of primary and secondary sources in teams for our informational writing unit.

Highlights from the Previous Week:

Students began presenting their Create Your Own Homework Projects. With the presentations, the class has been learning so much about many intriguing topics. 

• Julia taught us about alpine skiing.
  
• Talia and Kaela performed a skit about how the John and Paul met to form The Beatles.
• Olivia Y. taught us how chocolate is made.
• Sam explained how the human body heals its wounds.
  
• Layla introduced us to the beautiful anime movie "My Neighbor Totoro" by Hayao Miyazaki.
  
• Forrest took us through the history of American football.
  
• Marc explained what a Skinner Box was and how pigeons could be trained to play ping pong with each other.
  
• Sofia told us how chocolate chip cookies were created.
• Nathan performed a powerful scene from Macbeth and explained who Shakespeare was.
• Olivia D. performed some pretty spectacular magic tricks.

And we still have more to share!

Students explored a variety of informational writing structures that they could use to present their own research. Students browsed through historical books and magazines to get ideas and inspiration. We looked at everything from clever presentations of timelines to historical comic strips.

Math has been fun this week. Students tackled some complex problems involving fraction multiplication. I challenged them further to use models and number lines to explain their thinking clearly and creatively. We shared our strategies in "math congresses" where students presented their work to the class.


Here is the general plan for this week:

Special:
There is a lot going on this week! 

All School Meeting on Monday, March 16th.

Our first 5th grade English Language PARCC test is on Tuesday from 9:00-10:30am. Remember, we are just "testing the test." Students should not feel any pressure to score well on the PARCC test. 

Parent Teacher Conferences continue this week.
Link to the Conference Schedule.

5th Grade Understanding Our Differences is on Thursday from 1:00-2:50pm. We will be learning about Intellectual Disabilities. Parent volunteers are still needed!

5th Grade Student Vs. Teacher Basketball Game is on Friday starting at 3:30pm. Students will need to be dismissed to a parent or guardian, who will then walk with them to Bigelow.


Reading: 

• We are reading samples of memoirs in our guided reading book groups. Students will be learning strategies to help them grow as readers.

Writing and Social Studies:

• We continue with Phase 2 of our informational writing unit, which focuses on historical research writing. This week, we will use text features to enhance our writing. We will also learn how to create cohesion and add  multiple points of view into our writing.
  

Math: 

• This week, we wrap up our fun unit on multiplying and dividing fractions called, "Parks and Playgrounds." Throughout this unit, students worked on multiplying fractions by whole numbers, breaking fractions into friendlier parts, understanding the relationship between multiplication and division, investigating ratios, and using models and drawings to show thinking clearly.
• We dive back into Everyday Math and explore an array model for multiplying fractions.

Thanks for reading! As always, please contact me with any questions, comments, or feedback.