Plans Week of September 14, 2015

Students turning and talking about what they're reading.

Highlights from Last Week:
Our class-created video about showing Respect and Concern for Others was a big hit at All School Meeting. Check it out here! We worked hard for an entire day planning, filming, and editing. Most academics were put on hold that day, but we think our work in the Social-Emotional subject was as important as reading and writing.

In Math, students took a challenging assessment that I will use later as a benchmark for checking their progress in decimals, multiplication, and division. As a reward, I created a fun game for them to play that helps them practice their basic multiplication facts. We'll play more of it next week.

In Writing, students continued working on their paragraph/essay on what their goal is for 5th grade. Some students want to slow down and make fewer careless errors in their work. Some students want to expand the range of genres they choose for reading. Other students want to improve skills such as spelling. I gave students an introduction to using Google Docs to type their writing, and they'll be launching into that this week.

What we didn't get to:
A lot, as usual! Alas, I forget how long teaching expectations and procedures takes. Plus, I forgot to allocate a sufficient amount of time to create our Respect and Concern video (which ended up taking pretty much all day on Wednesday). We still need to: Work on group skills; play class games; find a just right book; generate ideas and storytelling in writing; and finish "Factors and Arrays" in math. Decorating the writing journal will have to be nixed --there's simply no time for it.


This Week's Plan

Special: 
Monday: No School. Happy Rosh Hashanah!
Wednesday: Picture Day. We take class pictures at 11:45-12:30.


We continue our launch into the school year with social skills practice and introductory activities.

• Group Skills  --Explicit practice in the art of working with other people. We'll focus on listening, compromising, and non-verbal communication. These skills are essential for the partner work and team projects we do throughout the year.
• Inclusion and Class Games --We learn a few class games to play together and at recess. We'll also discuss ways to be safe and inclusive during the unstructured times of lunch and recess.

Reading:

• Find a "Just Right" Book --We'll learn how to find books that are just right for us. Students will then explore my classroom library and choose a good book to read independently.  
  
• Teacher Read Aloud --I will model how I think while I read. I will also preview some books for students by reading aloud the first chapter.
  
• Informal and formal assessments --While students independently read, I will float around the room and ask individual students to read aloud for me so I can learn more about each of them as readers.
• Increasing Stamina --We'll learn how to read more for longer with stamina strategies related to focus and preparation for reading.

Writing:

• Finish Goals Essay --Students will type up their paragraph/essay about their goal(s) for 5th grade, which includes strategies to help them reach their goal(s).
• Storytelling to Start --We'll practice a strategy called, "Storytelling," where students tell a partner about an experience to help get the order of events straight before writing.
• Generating Ideas --We'll learn some strategies for conquering the blank page. Students will learn how to think of people, places, and turning points and list them in a special place that they can always return to.

Math: 

• Factors and Arrays --We'll learn what a factor is and how to make an array to represent multiplication.
• Predict a Product --A Ms. Kimball original math game. We'll practice instant recall of multiplication facts by playing this fun game. There's a harder version I will introduce this week too!
• Factor Captor Game --This is an Everyday Math game designed to help students find factors of numbers and to introduce prime and composite numbers.
• Extended Multiplication Facts --We'll learn how to use basic facts like 6 x 7 = 42 to help us find extended facts like 60 x 70 = 4,200.

Science/Social Studies:
This week we again hold off on Science and Social Studies to focus on launching reading, writing, and math. 


Homework:
Please visit the Homework Page for full details. Students have their first  Reading Response Blog to respond to and their first Homework Project to complete.


Thanks for Reading!
So that's the plan for the week. Please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or concerns. Have a great week!