Week of December 12-16

Good afternoon, parents! This week has flown by! Monday is our BizTown field trip. Please see below for a couple of important reminders.

ü  Bring a sack lunch if you didn’t order one.

ü  Kids should dress professionally (Don’t go out and buy anything, but no jeans or workout clothes if you can avoid it.)

There is a LOT going on next week, so please make note of these important events for each day next week.

 

*Please remember to send in your gifts for our Holiday Giving Project no later than Monday.
 
Monday: BizTown & Holiday Giving Project gifts are due.
Tuesday: Ugly Sweater Day for Teachers (so I’m inviting kids to dress festively as well)
Wednesday: Math Test (Study guide due Tuesday)
Thursday: Skate Party 6-8pm (The Whitley crew will be there and the class with the highest attendance wins free pizza at Champ’s!)
Friday: Pajama Day & Holiday Party at 9am. Parents are welcome to attend! J

 

Here’s what we’ll be learning next week:
ELA: During ELA next week, we will be working on editing, revising, and publishing opinion pieces. I will do my best to send home a copy with your child on Friday.
Word Study: We will finish our study of apostrophes.
Math: We will wrap up our unit on decimals.
Social Studies: We will continue our study of colonization as we shift our focus to the colonial regions next week!

Learning Lately

 As many of you know, we recently completed a unit on European exploration. During this unit, students had an opportunity to create advertisements for tools used in this time period of exploration. They had a lot of fun with it.  Unit on European exploration. During this unit, students had an opportunity to create advertisements for tools used in this time period of exploration. They had a lot of fun with it. Here is some of our work! 

 

 

Recently, students read and were read to by their 1st grade book buddy. We love book buddies because not only do we read together, but we also get to share our WIGs and help with leadership notebooks!

 

 

A couple of weeks ago, we had a mayoral race for BizTown. Though she didn't win the overall 5th grade vote, Ryan, rocked her speech and our class was behind her all the way. We were very proud of all of our candidates! We also examined a book called Encounter recently where on day one we only saw the pictures. On day 2, we had to combine text evidence with visual evidence to determine which text went with which picture. We also got to debate about the our findings. Then today, we read the book and found out most of our inferences were correct!

Here you can see some BizTown hands-on learning in action! During this lesson, students worked with their table members to create a prototype of some kind to sell the next day.  

 

 

 

Mannequin Challenge

Check out our mannequin challenge!
http://viewpure.com/vVmT_aNWODQ?start=0&end=0

Battle of the Books Quiz Links

Click on the links below to take online comprehension quizzes for each BOB book! Let Mrs. Whitley know each time you take a quiz by recording the quiz and your score in your agenda and you will receive a ticket! Good luck, kids! Let's rock this Battle!!

The Watsons Go to Birmingham
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/3396-the-watsons-go-to-birmingham-1963-quiz
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-watsons-go-to-birmingham-1963/study-guide/quiz1

Out of My Mind
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/4824-out-of-my-mind
https://www.quia.com/quiz/3703311.html

Mission Unstoppable
https://www.quia.com/quiz/3423590.html
http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/Kids/GamesAndContests/Quiz.aspx?GQId=4483823

Rules
https://www.quia.com/quiz/1426768.html
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-rules/free-quiz.html#gsc.tab=0

The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky
https://www.quia.com/quiz/5462480.html

Crash
https://www.quia.com/rr/837440.html
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-crash-jerry-spinelli/free-quiz.html#gsc.tab=0

When You Reach Me
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-when-you-reach-me/free-quiz.html#gsc.tab=0
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/2347-when-you-reach-me

The Fairy Tale Detectives
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/7435-the-fairy-tale-detectives
https://www.quia.com/quiz/3302657.html

Among the Hidden
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-among-the-hidden/free-quiz.html
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/25396-among-the-hidden

Chasing the Falconers
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/30607-chasing-the-falconers-1
http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz30334722ba6f0.html

Week of November 7-11

Dates to Know

Nov. 8 ~ No School for Election Day

Nov. 10 ~ Book Fair Shopping @ 9:00am (Parents are welcome to join us.)

Nov. 16 ~ Early Release Day

 

Upcoming Quizzes

Wed, 11/9 ~ Native Americans

Fri, 11/11 ~ Exploration

 

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Have you signed up for your parent-teacher conference? If not, click the link below! It is important that I meet with each family so you can receive your child’s progress report.

http://signup.com/go/MKqsHH

 

Here’s what we’re learning this week!

Reading: Our focus for reading this week will be learning to q

Writing: This week we will continue to explore opinion writing and we will work on learning to build support for our opinions using a variety of interesting topics.

Word Study: This week we will continue to focus on the rules for pluralization as well as appropriate uses for the apostrophe.

Math: In math, the focus will continue to be decimal place value and operations. My group will be working on rounding, adding, and subtracting decimals.

Social Studies: We will have 2 quizzes this week. The first will be over Native Americans on Wednesday. The second will be on Friday and it will be over exploration.

 

Have a great week, and as always, don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns! J

Blenspace

Age of Exploration ~ Technological Tools
https://www.tes.com/lessons/_5Nt1ciGaIqYFg/technology-in-the-age-of-exploration

Week of October 31-November 4

Report Card Video
Important! Please click here to view the report card explanation!


Welcome back and Happy Halloween!! We had a really fun day today! Ask your child about his/her opinion on the existence of the Loch Ness Monster!

 Upcoming Quizzes
Native American Quiz (11/9) and Exploration Quiz (11/11)
 

Coming soon…
An email with a link for conference sign ups will be coming soon. Please be sure to sign up as this is where you will receive your child’s report card.

• Book Fair next week! We will preview this Wednesday and our shopping day will be Thursday, 11/10.

Here’s what we’re learning this week…

7 Habits: This week we will focus on habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Reading:  Our focus for reading this week will be on learning how to quote accurately from a text when explaining what that text says. We will be reading some interesting material and using the strategy of state, cite, explain to continue building our abilities in this area as this is a lifelong skill.

Writing: For writing, our focus is opinion writing. Students will be given many opportunities this week to practice building an opinion through writing.

Word Study: In examining student writing, I've discovered a need for learning the appropriate use of the apostrophe and the pluralization rules. Therefore, we will begin learning the rules for apostrophe use and pluralization this week.

Math: During math, we will continue to build our understanding of decimals looking a comparing and then understanding how to order decimals in both ascending and descending order.

Social Studies:  We will be wrapping up our unit on exploration this week and next as we examine the history of European exploration, as well as its impact on geography, and economics.

Week of October 17-21

As a reminder, this week is Red Ribbon Week! Be sure to remind your child to dress in support of our themes! Please remember to speak with your child each day this week about the importance of saying no to drugs so we can reinforce the message both at home and at school.

Monday: Wear red

Tuesday: Wear a hat

Wednesday: Wear sunglasses

Thursday: Wear bright colors

Dates to Remember:

October 21-28: Fall Break

Here's what we're learning this week!

Reading: During reading this week, we will review how to find the theme of a story, how to locate important information in a passage, and how to use textual evidence to support our thinking after reading a passage.

Writing: During writing this week, we will do several "short writes" to continue practicing the skill of embedding different themes into our writing.

Word Study: After analyzing student writing, I've noticed a need for teaching of the word study rules for adding -ed and -ing to verbs. Thus, we began practicing last week and we will continue to practice these rules this week. The hope is that it will begin to carry over into student writing.

Math: We are starting a new unit this week on decimal place value and operations. We will begin this week by learning how to read and write decimals in various forms. Then we will study the relationships between place value positions (e.g., 0.01 is 1/10 of 0.1). Please look for your child's recent math test in the Tuesday folder, sign and return it to school. Thank you in advance. 

Social Studies: We will continue to learn about how Exploration began, the motives for exploration, the results of exploration, and the impact it had on Native Americans.

It's going to be a short week--only 4 days until Fall Break! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. 

Recent Learning Events

The following pictures will show you much of what has been happening in our classroom during social studies over the last couple of weeks. Enjoy!

 

These students are partnered up together with two Native American regions. They examined the picture and read the text to determine ways in which to depict the cultural characteristics of their assigned regions.

Every student was put into a group to make a mural on a Native American culture region.Using their graphic organizers they were able to illustrate that attributes of their culture region including shelter, environment, food, and artifacts.

For this activity, students were able to examine the 3  most common series of migration to the Americas. They analyzed actual evidence from site cards, a map, a globe, and background on the theories to determine whether they believed the original Native Americans came from across the Atlantic Ocean, along the coast down the Pacific Ocean, or across a land bridge during the Ice Age.  Students then had the opportunity to debate with one another about which theory they believe to be true, as well as the opportunity to piece together their own theory of migration. It was a really cool lesson! 

.

For this lesson, students had an opportunity to put together a pic collage or a brochure depicting the Eastern Woodlands Native American tribal cultures.

 Finally, today the students had an opportunity to act out scenes from pictures showing the interactions between Native Americans and explorers . I then interviewed with kids as though they were actually living during that time. It was a lot of fun and it was interesting to hear them and for how the people in these images might have felt during their interactions.

 

 

Top Secret Problem 10-3

For those who would like to work on it at home, here is this week's top secret problem!

 

Week of October 3-7

Good afternoon, parents! Happy Friday! I hope you’ve enjoyed the week! We learned a lot this week as we explored Native American culture regions, worked on summarizing, exploring theme, utilizing prefixes, and even trying out various division strategies. I really appreciate your support in encouraging your students to complete the flipped classroom work on Native American culture regions. Every student completed the graphic organizer thoroughly and on time, which allowed them the opportunity to work in groups during class to create murals of the 7 culture regions they studied at home! The murals turned out beautifully and they will be displayed in our classroom! Blog pictures coming soon…!

 

Dates to Know:

October 12^th~Early Release @ 12:20pm

October 12^th~Fall Festival 6-8pm

 

7 Habits: This week we will continue to use the mission statements written by the kids to write our own personal and academic WIGs. A WIG is a “Wildly Important Goal.”

Reading: During reading this week, we will continue to explore theme, but now we will examine it through the lens of poetry. We will then segue into determining an author’s purpose.

Writing: During writing, the kids will apply what they’ve learned about theme this week in order to embed theme into their own writing. They will be given the opportunity to write a story and a poem which incorporates the theme of their choice.

Math: As we near the end of this current math unit, students will be learning about division, order of operations, as well as verbal and numerical expressions of numbers.

Social Studies: Our focus for social studies will continue to be Native Americans as we learn about their systems of government and economics. We will then begin to explore the time period of exploration through the lens of culture and geography.

 

Flipped Classroom~Native American Cultural Regions

Listen to each of these readings and take notes on each Native American cultural region using the graphic organizer provided to you on Monday, 9/26. It is important that you have notes for each heading . The organizer needs to be completed and returned no later than Thursday, 9/28 so that we can complete an in-class project on the Native American cultural regions.

Eastern Woodlands Cultural Region

Southeast Cultural Region

Great Plains Cultural Region

Plateau Cultural Region

Northwest Coast Cultural Region

California-Intermountain Range

Southwest Cultural Region

Week of 9/26 & Tiger Trek

Tiger Trek Fun!!

This Week’s Curriculum

7 Habits: How do I set my own WIGs (wildly important goals)?

ELA (Reading & Writing): How do authors use idioms, adages, and proverbs in their writing? We will examine the differences between these types of figurative language and explore their meaning, as well as use them in our own writing this week.

Word Study: What are prefixes, suffixes, and root words? Kids will learn decoding skills as we study the meaning of various prefixes, suffixes, and root words, as well as the impact of prefixes and suffixes in altering the meaning of words.

Math: How do I multiply and divide whole numbers? We will continue to practice multiplication using both the area model and the standard algorithm, examine the relationship between multiplication and division, and eventually work towards dividing whole numbers.

Social Studies: How do I read and analyze maps? We will continue to explore maps and their components and we will review for this week’s test.

Pokemon Parts of Speech, Synthesizing, & Map Labeling

Early this week, we reviewed parts of speech and the kids had the opportunity to go on a parts of speech client around the room. For each part of speech they collected all of the words for, they earned a Pokémon card! It was a lot of fun!

 

Today we worked on synthesizing information from a really interesting article about how dogs and humans understand language in the same way! The kids worked hard to determine importance and then summarize in order to synthesize the information!

 Finally, this afternoon we were working on maps. One thing the kids completed was an activity where they had to find and label the various landforms and bodies of water on a physical map. They did a great job working in pairs! 

It was a great week!

Week of September 19-23

Good afternoon, parents! It has been an awesome week! The kids have been laughing at me because every day I tell them, “We have so much to do,” and it’s true! However, we are learning so much and I’m impressed with the hard work everyone is putting forth! This week we tried to make Oobleck for their 20^th star celebration on Monday. It didn’t go so well, but everyone stayed really positive and smiles were all around the room despite Mrs. Whitley’s poor recipe following skills! We also took time out to allow the kids to perform their poetry for 2 and 3 voices and it was AMAZING!! Each group or pair chose a unique topic and a unique approach to it in their writing. They all synergized to write and perform, and we all enjoyed watching the performances during class. I will post videos to the blog as soon as I can get them uploaded. I want you all to know that we have a wonderful class and I’m so grateful to work with your children this year. J

 

Upcoming Tests & Quizzes

Wednesday, 9/21~Quiz over continents, oceans, equator, and prime meridian (Kids must be able to label these accurately on a map.)

Friday, 9/23~Geography Test (study guide coming home today; due on Wednesday, 9/21 so we can go over it)

 
Dates to Know
Thursday, 9/22~Tiger Trek (Send a water bottle with your child’s name on it and clothes they can exercise in. Students will also receive a free Tiger Trek T-shirt that morning when they come in to wear during the day.)

 

Color Days Next Week

Monday: Purple
Tuesday: Black
Wednesday: Brown
Thursday: White
Friday: Pink

This Week’s Curriculum

7 Habits: How do I set my own WIGs (wildly important goals)?

ELA (Reading & Writing): How do authors use idioms, adages, and proverbs in their writing? We will examine the differences between these types of figurative language and explore their meaning, as well as use them in our own writing this week.

Word Study: What are prefixes, suffixes, and root words? Kids will learn decoding skills as we study the meaning of various prefixes, suffixes, and root words, as well as the impact of prefixes and suffixes in altering the meaning of words.

Math: How do I multiply and divide whole numbers? We will continue to practice multiplication using both the area model and the standard algorithm, examine the relationship between multiplication and division, and eventually work towards dividing whole numbers.

Social Studies: How do I read and analyze maps? We will continue to explore maps and their components and we will review for this week’s test.

Our First Sharpen the Saw Time

On Thursday of this week, our class got to have our first Sharpen the Saw time in the gym! They opted to play an exciting game of Capture the Flag! Sportsmanship was excellent and fun was had by all! Here are a couple of pictures to capture their fun!