Week of October 26, 2015

These are our models of earth and its atmosphere used to demonstrate the water cycle.

Highlights from Last Week:

Students published some fantastic pieces of writing this week —their opinion essays. Students wrote about a variety of topics: why we should get air conditioners in our classrooms, why we should have a vending machine in the cafeteria, why school should start earlier, and many more interesting arguments. Throughout the unit, students learned many invaluable essay writing techniques, such as how to structure an essay using repetition, how to use transition and thinking words and phrases to connect ideas, and how to write toward an audience. To celebrate the completion of this unit, students read their essays in small groups and offered each other praise and feedback.

We have started our quest to conquer one of the most formidable math adversaries: Division. This week students learned how to “build a quotient,” using known multiplication facts to build up to an answer. This is an excellent way to strengthen their number sense, build a strong understanding of the concept of division, and set them up for success when they need to divide decimals and fractions.

Our class read aloud of Louis Sachar’s There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom continues to thrill the class. Students are learning how to use text evidence to make inferences about a character’s development over the course of the story. During the read aloud, students turn and talk throughout to share predictions, inferences, and analyses with each other. It’s amazing how deep they are getting in to the symbolism and themes of the story!

On Friday, students saw a presentation from local veterans to raise awareness and understanding of Veterans’ Day. Although I was absent that day, I heard students got a lot out of it.
 
What we didn't get to:
My reading lesson plan didn't get executed very well. We mostly did independent reading last week. I will try for Reading Choice Time and Writing About Reading this week.


This Week's Plan

Special:
Wednesday: Early Release. Parent Teacher Conferences. Students are invited and encouraged to attend.
Friday: Spirit Day! Wear black and orange for Halloween fun.


Reading:
Routines of readers' workshop and fall reading assessments.

• Writing About Reading –Students will continue to practice writing about their reading using our list of Reading Action Verbs. I will model the type of responses I expect and invite students to share their own with a partner.
• Reading Choice Time –We will discuss how to make Choice Time accountable and productive so that I am more likely to give students the opportunity to choose the project that they work on.
• Teacher Read Aloud  –There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar. As I read, students turn and talk to share their analyses and evaluations of the characters and plot developments.

Writing:
We begin a new unit: Personal Narratives.

• Pre-Assessment –Students’ first task is to write a sample personal narrative to show what they’re able to do at the start of this unit.
• Turning Points –Students will brainstorm first times, last times, and time they realized something to help them generate personal narrative topics.
• Reliving the Moment –We will practice some strategies to help us see our experience in a step by step way before we write.
• Reading to Write –To inspire our narrative craft, we will read published personal narratives and get ideas for our own.

Math: 
Estimation and computation.​​

• Estimating Division Quotients –Students will learn how to estimate the answer to a division problem by rounding the dividend to a "friendly number" to the divisor and using their understanding of powers of 10 to place the quotient in the right place value.
• Division with 1-digit Divisors –Using the intuitive Partial Quotientsalgorithm, students will use their multiplication skills to divide up to 5-digit dividends by 1-digit divisors. (DIVIDEND divided by DIVISOR equals QUOTIENT)
• Division with 2-digit Divisors –Students will learn how to divide by 2-digit numbers using a menu of options for building a quotient.
• Division Number Stories –We will learn how to turn English into Math and solve real world division problems.

Science:
Weather and Climate.

• Cloud Formations –We will examine how clouds form how the different types of clouds cause our weather.
• Measuring Weather –We will investigate atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, wind speed and direction, and precipitation, as well as how we can measure these weather indicators.

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Homework:
Please visit the Homework Page for full details.

• Students do not have a new Reading Response Blog, but they must comment on another student's post and reply to my comment by Friday.
• There is no new homework project this week.
• There will be a math page or two each night.
• I will assign some practice with "modifying clauses." Modifying clauses, which provide additional information about nouns within a sentence, help make students' writing more informative and interesting. Look! I just used one in the last sentence.
• For ambitious students, there will be a Science Challenge to build your own weather measuring instrument. These can be turned in by any time before Friday.

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