Week of March 21, 2016

Students sharing their "King George" speeches, expressing displeasure at the behavior of the American colonists.

 Highlights from Last Week:
Students finished their Informational Writing Projects! They wrote about a variety of topics, from dolphins, penguins, and armadillos, to the US Government, black holes, and the Boston Tea Party. Students did a fantastic job incorporating techniques such as a friendly yet informative tone, comparisons to amusing things in real life, and text features such as definitions and fun facts. Amazing work everyone!
 
Students persevered in solving the most complex sequence of mathematical calculations they have yet to do in their academic career: multiplying mixed numbers. We learned two different strategies, the partial products way and the improper fraction way. Both ways require many steps to get an answer. We even made a game out of getting more than one person to arrive at the same answer, that’s how challenging it is!
 
Although MCAS practice can be very boring, here in 5K we make it fun. This week we tackled a well-written poem that snuck in multiple points of view. We analyzed the text to determine when and how the point of view changed (it did multiple times!), and learn how important it is to recognize the perspective that the text is written from.
 
Students are still loving Class Dojo. They’re earning special markers (35 points), comfy chair privileges (50 points), and soon homework passes (65 points).

 
What we didn't get to:

• The meteorologist had to cancel on us, so expect a reschedule this or next week.
• Area models for mixed number multiplication in math.

This Week's Plan
 
Special:

• Haymakers for Hope: Presentation about a charity boxing organization, tied in to our Global Citizenship project.
• Thursday Chorus Performance: For the Council of the Aging
• Friday No School –Good Friday

Math: 
Multiplication of Fractions.

• Mixed numbers times mixed numbers –We’ll continue to practice this challenging concept with a team game.
• Area model for mixed number multiplication –This involves using a grid to model mixed number dimensions and finding the area of the space inside.
• Scaling and Resizing –Fraction multiplication can help us scale dimensions to be larger or smaller.
  
  

Writing:  
Informational Writing Project Wrap Up. Begin Business Letter Writing.

• Share, Celebrate, and Reflect On our finished projects.
• On-Demand Research for a new topic (to be used for the final assessment).
• Post-Unit On-Demand Writing of a new informational text, which is our assessment for this unit. We’ll compare our pre-unit on-demands with this post-unit on-demand to see what we’ve learned about writing informational texts.
• Business Letter Overview –As part of our Global Citizenship project, we will learn to write business letters that take a formal tone in order to inform and persuade members of an organization.
  
  

Reading:
Book Groups. Point of View.

• Point of View in Fiction –We will describe how a narrator’s point of view influences how events are described.
• Point of View in Informational Texts –We will analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic.
• Book Groups –Some groups may wrap up this week.

 
Social Studies:
Finish up the Causes of the American Revolution.

• Write an Informational Text describing the causes that lead up to the American Revolution. This will be used as an assessment. Students may conduct additional research.

 
Homework:
Please visit the Homework Page for more details.

• Homework Project: None.
• Math: There will be a page or two of math practice each night.
• Reading: 25 minutes of daily independent reading is expected. Students should log it in their Planners. 
• Reading Response Blog:  Students must reply to blog #14 by Thursday.
• MCAS Practice –Students will have one MCAS practice packets to work on this week, which is due Thursday.

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