October 22, 2013 Day 38-Week 9

Tuesday  aka Tech Tuesday

Today we had to make up for some lost learning time so we had five book project presentations.   The presentations have run the gamut so far from homemade games, a recreation of an ancient game, tests, word searches, crossword puzzles, radio advertisements, live Amazon book reviews, many brand new book covers, and some detailed timelines!!  

Some students are really getting the idea of referencing specific quotes, events and parts of the book when they are explaining something that made them think or made them have an opinions.  For many others they receive an email from me and offer suggestions regarding how they can go back and improve upon their initial grade.  I joke with the students that these projects are like zombies, they don’t go away easily.  Students not earning 3’s in all six categories are strongly encouraged to make the improvements and resubmit the parts (and only the parts below a 3) to me prior to their Student Led Conference time.   If they don’t show you my email or the rubric, send me an email and I’ll forward it to you.

We also reviewed last night’s lesson on multiplication with decimals and estimation.  Today’s lesson is similar it is division with decimals and estimation.  So we are practicing the easier concepts of multiplication and division of decimals using the scaffolding method of strategic estimation.  

We spent the last part of the day working on our month math project.  This month’s project is all about decimal addition and subtraction as the students are trying to make a specific purchase.  It truly is a puzzle to find the exact combination and it is waaay more fun and rewarding to watch them struggle than test prepping or curriculum associates.  Some of their debates in their smaller teams and how they go about trying to solve this has been revealing and I’m assuming enlightening for everyone in the room.   I have had to bite my tongue as to not just “show them” how to solve it.  Ask your son and daughter how they doing and what they are doing to try and solve the problem.  

In the computer lab today they kids put in 15 to 20 minutes of typing practice.  The district has purchased an on-line typing tutor program for all students K-12 however that purchase & rollout has been taking a while.  Therefore students are encouraged to go to this link and practice on the various typing games:

https://www.diigo.com/user/iamron/typing

Then students worked on place value with www.ixl.com and finally Reading & Language Arts with www.scootpad.com   With scootpad the first unit is all about verb tenses, comma usage, and how to use various resources to find information.  

As a reminder please see my email with the link to sign up for a student-led conference.  

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework for the week:

Math:

Halloween Sales (handout) due on Thursday

Page 160-161 1-8 and 14-17 due on Wednesday

• original problem
• show estimated numbers
• show estimated quotient (use the guess check or stack method)

Page 87  10-32 even problems due on Thursday

• original problem
• show estimated numbers
• solve quotient (use guess check or stack)

Page 142  9-20 all due on Friday

• original problem
• estimated numbers
• solve for the product using original numbers (use the generic area model).

Reading and History:

Comanch Horesemen due on Wednesday

Bartering for Basics due Thursday

Plan on Common Core “product” homework on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening.  For Tuesday evening students were given a short article.  The just needed to read, highlight and find words that they don’t understand.   Here is the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/common-core-fallacy_b_3809159.html

Read 20 minutes every night

Free write due on Friday -- scariest thing in my life was…………….

October 21, 2013 Day 37-Week 9

Happy Monday. 

It was just another amazing Monday full of great weather.   We are experiencing low 80’s in the later stage of October.  These are glorious times people.  

Today we experienced a day full of unique events which made the day go by especially quick.  The students continued completing their Halloween write up that we began on Friday.  Then we took a break so every child could take a quick eye test.   

We then had two book project presentations today.   We had possibly our best presentation so far with someone who made a number line with over 25 entries!!  Most importantly throughout the presentation the student would have an opinion or an analysis and she would back it up with specific facts and information from her reading of the book!!!   For many of her sections it was clear that she understood the need to substantiate her thoughts by making reference to specific parts in her book.  

After recess we continued our 10 question test from Friday on the math concepts that we covered last week.  Students were asked to estimate while dividing and multiplying.  Students were then asked to use guess & check or stacking method to divide.  Finally students had to use the generic area model to complete their multiplication.  

From there we then had our 5th grade “hearing” test.  Therefore while both the hearing and eye test are necessary they did take a significant amount of time which severely cut our day short.  

We then did two examples from tonight’s homework which is division and estimating where one of the numbers is a decimal.  

See the notes here.

Overall goal for this week -- for the first trimester we are really really hitting home the idea of substantiating our thoughts by making reference from where we acquired information/logic to our ideas/theories.   
Therefore we are working on a Halloween project where the students had to refer back to specific sections from their reading and we also watched a Brainpop.com twice as students took copious notes.   Then all this week we will be working on completing our own Common Core assessment where we have opinions on the Common Core and the students use their four different articles and two videos as explicit references to their support their opinions.  

We ended the day was a special Shark of the Week presentation after we completed collecting and writing down our homework for the week.

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework for the week:

Math:

Halloween Sales (handout) due on Thursday

Page 140-141  1-6 and 9-14 all due Tuesday

• Original problem
• Show estimated numbers
• Show the estimated product
  
  

Page 160-161 1-8 and 14-17 due on Wednesday

• original problem
• show estimated numbers
• show estimated quotient (use the guess check or stack method)

Page 87  10-32 even problems due on Thursday

• original problem
• show estimated numbers
• solve quotient (use guess check or stack)

Page 142  9-20 all due on Friday

• original problem
• estimated numbers
• solve for the product using original numbers (use the generic area model).

Reeading and History:

Comanch Horesemen due on Wednesday

Bartering for Basics due Thursday

Plan on Common Core “product” homework on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening.

Read 20 minutes every night

Free write due on Friday -- scariest thing in my life was…………….

October 15, 2013 Day 34-Week 8

The new Bay Bridge seemed appropriate on the week of the big shake out.

Tomorrow is make up photo day.  If you didn't like the first set of photos, you can pay to take a new batch or if you missed the first photo day during the registration process in August -- tomorrow is your big chance.   Your son/daughter were given an envelope yesterday. If the envelope did not make it home, then go to www.inter-state.com and the code is 401821  

I did give the kids one extra day for their project.  So it is now due on Thursday, October 17th.  If you need the directions -- click here.  All in all I have tried to slightly lighten the homework load so the procrastinators will have a realistic chance to complete the book project at a 5th grade level.  

We read today another article about the Common Core rollout.  We have now read three different articles.  They have one more assigned this week as homework and we plan on reading two more this week.  All in all they will have read five different articles and watched two different videos.  They will be the most well versed students on the subject and will be able to write about it.   

Math -- Monday was all about division and practicing the basic fundamentals of division.  

The notes on division can be found here.

Here is the ultimate lesson on the various ways to divide.

The today’s math lesson was all about multiplying with decimals, estimating and once again the generic area model.  My notes today breakdown what the generic area model looks like with decimals.   

The notes on multiplication with decimals can be found here.  

Going forward with the three various chapters -- as a general rule every night the students will:

1.  Write the original problem down

2.  Then “quickly” estimate and solve the problem (they show this in writing).  This should be a “rough” estimate where it will supply the student with guidance if their final arithmetic makes sense.  

3.  Solve the problem using the original numbers -- depending on the lesson they may be instructed to use generic area model, stack division or guess and check division.  

A reminder that Friday’s field trip was canceled due to the Government Shutdown.  

FYI -- students are making great progress on their letters to our politicians.  Today about ½ the class were able to format and follow the instructions for creating a business letter.  We hope to mail off the letters on Thursday.  

Thursday is the big http://www.shakeout.org/  event.  We will be practicing our earthquake drill on this day.  It is a great opportunity to make sure that your family has a plan if members should be separated during a major disaster.   Do you have a meet up place other than your house?  Do you have a common relative (out of the area)  that can act as a communication middle-man if you can not reach each other.   Also your family should have 3 to 4 days of misc food/water/supplies in case of a significant disaster.  

Homework for the week:

Show me on Wednesday -- how many liters does 10 centiliters equal.

This was based on Friday’s notes and discussions.

Watch this video if they did not take great notes.

*students are also strongly encouraged to watch the entire series on the metric system.  It will help w/ the math standard of 10, 100, and 1,000 (X and division) while also be used extensively beginning in 6th grade science.

Page 138 9-20 all due Wednesday

original problem

estimate and solve

using the generic area model -- then solve the original problem

Page 157 14-25 all due Thursday

original problem

estimate and solve

Students may divide using standard division

Students must choose 2 problems and use guess check

Check out for instructions how to use guess check with division&decimals.

Page 87 9-31 odds only

original problem

estimate and solve

stack or guess and check method only  

Here is the ultimate lesson on the various ways to divide.

Book Project now due on the 17th

Spelling Test on Friday  

Animal Adjectives due on Friday

Active and Passive Transport read and respond due on Thursday

*students need to point out where they located their inference in order to meet 5th grade standards

Make up photo day is 10/16/13

The Best and Worst of Times due on Friday.  Must read and complete the main idea worksheet.

October 9, 2013 Day 30-Week 7

I love our library. Did you know you can subscribe to free magazines w/ your card?

It was Walk and Roll Day today!!  I tried to be a good role model and  I walked the 4.4 miles from my house to school (full disclosure I’m hitching a ride home).  So I started off the day with a nice sweat while catching up on my Freakonomics podcasts.  Special thanks to Jared who shared his Walk and Roll Day sticker with me!!

Today -- I did an extra special amount of math.  Why?  Because I received feedback that yesterday’s math with converting the division problems to fractions and using the “power of one” to simplify could use some more examples.  The tech gods spent an additional 80+ minutes on Tuesday afternoon since my tablet took portions of Monday and Tuesday off and refused to work or display.  I could not capture notes because there were no notes to capture.

Well I have all of today’s review of yesterday, notes for tonight and notes for tomorrow night.  

Click here to see those long awaiting notes.

We also found time while doing an extensive math time to discuss about:

Google Glass

Nexus Watch

Privacy Issues with both

How both could be useful for different professions.  For example firefighters and surgeons using Google Glass.  Also we discussed how easily within their lifetime getting immediate access to facts and information will be seamless and take seconds.  

Which led to a discussion on trusting your sources, the The Forest Octopus , Snopes.com (again), the need to look beyond the first 2 or 3 links on a Google search and why they need to confirm where they are getting their information.

After our morning math and associated discussions:

We did more practice with the comprehension expectations -- we used the Mr. Wolman document to answer correctly and show correctly where they read and got their information.

In their singing class today they did a great job and earned a “Super” from Mrs. Jones.  I was proud of their concerted effort to improve their behavior in this area.

Finally we are beginning our information unit on non-fiction reading that will lead us to creating an comprehension exercises similar to the testing they will see in the new Common Core.  We will be reading about…..”Common Core” and then writing about what we found.  

Today we started with an article that ran in Time magazine just two weeks ago.  We had a long discussion on how to find where this article came from, who was the author and were Time and the author legitimate/trustworthy sources.  

We then began reading it and they were to finish reading it tonight.  You may want to ask to read the three page article.  It is very eveningly written and it addresses the pros/cons of the new Common Core.  

The field trip, despite the government shutdown, is still a go on the 18th.  Therefore I will be confirming drivers on Thursday.  Look for an email from me.

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework for the week:  

Navajo Star (math + art) due on Thursday.  Students must show their work.

Test form A due on Tuesday

Page 136 9-36 all write original problem and multiply by moving decimal due Thursday

Click here to work on multiplying and dividing by 10, 100, and 1000;  

Also my notes.

If students log into Khan they can earn extra credit by watching movies and completing practice examples!!

Page 154 1-31 all original problem.  divide by moving decimal due Friday

Language Arts and Social Studies:

Tissue, Organs, and Systems due on Thursday -- complete sentences and refer back to the article

Book Project is due on October 16th.  Click here for directions.

Two evenings with non-fiction reading:

We are putting together an information assessment for practice on Friday.  STudents will read two different pieces of written information, watch an informational video and then create an analysis piece on early next week.  They must make a minimum of three direct references to what they read & watched.  

Spelling Test is on Friday.  We are on test #4.  

Free-Write due on Friday:  

“My teacher is on steroids…..”

Read 20 minutes every night.