November 19, 2013 Day 55-Week 13

Day 55 of Week 13

We began the day testing my inner zen by me attempting to play a DVD.  Windows 8 does not come with DVD capabilities therefore we are using some freeware software that apparently can not play DVD’s with submenus.   There is so much “energy” and “potential chaos” that exists when technology refuses to work for 5+ minutes.  As you can imagine the 30 students just sit there quietly in a meditative state contemplating how they can best utilize this time to accomplish homework or self test each other on states & capitals.  All the while the teacher struggles trying to get something that in the year 2013 should be easily doable.  

We moved on…..

The 5th graders have been asked to perform during our school’s Board Presentation on December 10, 2013 at 6:30 p.m.  Therefore all of 5th grade practiced the new school song that was created by Ms. Jones-Heintz.  So we practiced for 30+ minutes.  

FYI -- Ms. Jones-Heintz would like to confirm and practice a few times with 40 DES 5th graders that can commit to 100% attending and performing on 12/10/13.   Therefore the first 40 students to RSVP will be selected.   I personally hand delivered all RSVP forms to the students in class today and encouraged them to bring them home.  If your son/daughter can for sure attend that night, please return the form to the office ASAP.   

The students learned some basic Google Drive skills today.  We talked about using the “shared with me”  and the “my drive.”  I showed them how I have created a 2013 2014 drive for the students.  That drive will be their primary source for sharing and placing homework into as the year goes along.  

We also learned about the “share” function in each document.  They now know how to share only with me, allow their peers to edit or comment or view only.  

We then went over the expectations for Friday’s compare/contrast essay.  

Our superstar student Alexis then gave a thorough presentation to everyone regarding Spelling City   Students have a great resource to play games and type their spelling words into the website.  It is a great resource for students who need a little TLC in order to bring up their spelling grades.  

For our Tuesday technology time the students practiced typing for 20 minutes.   Ask your son/daughter what their current words per minute is.   We then did 25 minutes of Scootpad.com   We have been working so diligently on this that we are now the 38th ranked class in the USA for Language Arts.    Finally the kids were given 12 minutes to go on whatever site that they wanted however it had to be appropriate for school.  Many of the kids choose to compete on-line (up to 14 players?) in a typing contest.  

We did also go over last night’s math  homework and then we did two examples for tonight’s homework.   I made a special point to reemphasize and cover how they only have to divide up until the thousandths place.   This is especially important since many of tonight’s division could go on forever.  

Here are the notes from today.

If you son or daughter are still struggling on division, I have had two success stories of students who followed the complete “unit” on Khanacademy on division.  It has a mix of video lessons and exercises.   It should take a solid hour to go through the unit.  

Here is the Unit they call "LOOOOOng Division"

Don’t miss this one on the bottom left hand side:  Level Four Division

Thursday’s  Friendship Soup and Thanksgiving share out…

I like to build a large friendship soup on the week before Thanksgiving and the class will do a large circle.  We will enjoy our warm community made soup and share out regarding all the ways that we are thankful this year.  It is a great opportunity to enjoy the company of our classroom while also symbolically enjoying the food we all made together.   We will enjoy the soup after recess time and then have a long circle time sharing with each other things are we are grateful for.  

What does this entail?  

1. Each child should bring a sandwich size bag of their favorite vegetable.  The vegetable should already be washed and pre-cut.  If bringing potato, maybe put some water in the bag so they don’t turn too brown.   Please not larger than the sandwich size ziploc because 31 students will bring in a veggie therefore we will have enough vegetables.

2. If your child likes vegetable soup or if you would like to try it,, have your son/daughter bring in a clean tupperware container.  Typically the students will “try” the vegetable soup but rarely do they go for 2nds or whatever.  I generally have a significant amount of soup left over and I would love to share it out with other families.  

3.  Any vegetable will be fine, even frozen is fine, since it will cook all day.   Ideally it will be your child’s favorite vegetable but I also understand the pragmatics of the situation and maybe you bring whatever the heck is in the freezer or refrigerator on Thursday morning.   Tomatoes are fine, corn is great, if your child enjoys “onions” they do add a nice flavor to the soup, mushrooms are fine, and so are green leafy vegetables.  With all of the broth, water, and a commingling of 30 vegetables, kids are able to be served soup without whatever vegetable they don’t like.  

4.  Children have asked and I have said it is ok to bring jalapeno’s or other peppers.  However those will not be put into the big pot rather they would be on the side.

5.  Students have offered to bring Tabasco Sauce or Sriracha Sauce and once again that would be fine as well.  It will just be served on the side.  

6.  Remember we do have a peanut allergy in our class therefore keep that in mind.

Other details of note:   I cook one super big pot of soup, generally I use chicken broth in that one because I do find that more palatable.  However I do bring a smaller crock pot and make a vegetarian soup for our vegetarian friends.  

Unless your child is an avid vegetable soup eater, your son/daughter should still bring their lunch with them on Thursday.   Many of the kids will have some of the soup as a courtesy but it is far too healthy for them :)    Once again if your child or your family enjoy soup, have them bring an extra tupperware to school and I will send them home w/ soup.  Or you can stop by after school with your tupperware and I will give you some.  

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability

• John Wooden

Homework for the week:

Math

4-6 page 93 9-16 all due Wednesday   

write original problem

make division problem into a fraction -- You may be able to reduce/simplify the fraction through power of 1

Then solve the problem however you desire (guess & check, stack’em, or old’school division); problem must be solved with decimal # no writing “remainder”

*stop at the thousandths place!!!  Don’t go on forever.

*you may estimate if it helps you and you have the skill set to do it quickly

Chapter review page 148 1-15 all show your work due Thursday

Chapter review page 168-169 1-16 all show your work due Friday

Test on chapters 4, 6, and 7 Friday

Problem of the week due on Friday

History and Language Arts:

Read the article:  First Thanksgiving Set Important Example read by Tuesday

*take notes on it or highlight it.  Will be used in our compare and contrast article.

click here for all the Thanksgiving articles

Compare and Contrast essay due Friday

Your Thanksgiving and the First Thanksgiving

Use this template to get started.

*You must cite at least 5 times from articles or videos of the First Thanksgiving

*Must be typed (will be given time in class) and placed into our class’ compare/contrast Thanksgiving folder

Language Arts due Wednesday:

Xylem and Phloem Get Things Moving handout

Free-Write due Thursday

What are you thankful for?  

Hand written or shared only w/ me

Free-write due Friday

You are a turkey still alive the Friday after Thanksgiving, what is your survival story?

Thursday -- Friendship Soup

See detailed write up on the 11/19/13 web posting.  

November 18, 2013 Day 54-Week 13

It has been far too long since I last updated us on the all the happenings within C-5.  However it takes a great deal of time to create and meet with all 32 families in a 1 week window.  

Known time commitment -- 32 meetings for 25 minutes each (I have a 5 minute fudge room prior to the beginning of each conference and minutes at the end of each conference.  In theory it would be to allow me to prep and/or get ready for the upcoming conference.  In reality the conversations are usually so authentic and great that the time gets used up.

So literal live time for report cards mtgs:    32 X 25 = 800 minutes = 13 hours and 20  minutes.  

Creation of the report card:

II take roughly 40 minutes per report card to create them.  I look at the large stack of papers that were returned, review other paperwork that I have compiled, and beginning about 2 years ago, I review my google docs,  Google’s Keep and Evernote with my observational notes of things that occur during reading time, group time, etc.  Four or five times per week I take an hour long walk and you would be surprised how often some nugget of genius that a student showed pops up into my head.  With modern smart phones (e.g. Keep and Evernote) instead of making weird truncated notes on store receipts, my thoughts on students are captured waaay easier.    Then I try to create my notes and analysis that go into my comments or “my script” (just in case you thought I was just keeping up on NBA scores with the computer up during our conferences).  

So creation time: 32 x 40 = 1,000 minutes = 16 hours and 40 minutes

We still work 8:26-2:06 therefore you can see how the 30 additional hours can get quickly absorbed when you factor in minor nuisances like eating, commuting, fatherhood, husbandhood, and exercise.   Full disclosure I do receive a ½ day off to work on the report cards and I also could use the last Friday of conference week as a full day of conferences.  

I am not whining about this at all.   I always feel like I am a better teacher with the students after our 25 minute meeting. Why? Because you get to know the child so much as they lead their conference.   It is so edifying and so amazing to see the amount of love, care and respect that parents have for their child.  You see the mother and/or father dynamics in action as the their child orchestrates their student led conference.   You see the unconditional love, the jokes, the seriousness on faces or even the occasional  “mom look.”  I heard on two occasions last week the ominous “we’ll talk with dad about this when we get home.”   Then sometimes due to a child’s nerves, their challenges choices they made or the awesome progress they made, you see mom/dad just put their arms around the child; just a reaffirming touch to comfort their son/daughter that they will get through this.  Just last week I observed tears of joy or pride, tears of frustration, looks that made me glad I wasn’t that kid, and dads or moms that ask such amazing direct questions that it is not a surprise that their young child is so bright and inquisitive.   

What a long preface to my big return?  I just find these conferences so heart warming and reaffirming towards my profession however I figured no one really knows what they entail.  Since this year’s class has such kind, compassionate, uberly enthusiastic social kids the 32 conferences were a direct reflection of that energy and kindness.  I felt obligated to share and thank you.  

Today -- the week before the long Thanksgiving break.  Therefore we have much to accomplish and get done while also fighting the 10 year old’s desire to call it in and start daydreaming about the week off from school.  

Spelling pretest -- transpiration was a fun word to give an example about

Thanksgiving -- We read two different articles about the first Thanksgiving.  We learned many many unique things about the challenges to coming here on a cargo boat.  Ask your son or daughter about the idioms:

1.  Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

2.  Sitting on the pot

We then had a long talk about if there was a time machine and we tried to take one of the original Pilgrims to a Costco how that experience would go.  Running waste disposal in the bathroom, running water, “warm” water, toilet paper, air hand dryers, produce of fruits and vegetables regardless of the year, and freezers. We covered all that and more.   Ask them about what stood out.

Character Attributes in room C-5 -- we also voted and wrote about the students we felt best personifies respect, responsibility and caring.  

Math -- division with decimals as a divisor.

This is our third time covering this topic therefore tonight is a refresher on this.  

Lesson 7-4 page 171 Set D   1-8 all due Tuesday

Students were given 50 minutes to work on tonight’s homework, watch Khan Academy regarding division and vote & write mini paragraphs about the character attribute selections.  

We ended the day working on writing the homework for the week, the weekly math problem, and the monthly math problem.  

We also had a short conversation, AGAIN, regarding what is appropriate email communication with peers and also what is possibly considered SPAM.

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability

• John Wooden

Homework for the week:

Math

7-4  page 171 set D 1-8 all due Tuesday.

write original problem

make division problem into a fraction and then show how you are getting rid of the decimal (e.g. times 10/10 or 100/100 or 1000/1000)

Then solve the problem however you desire (guess & check, stack’em, or old’school division)

*you may estimate if it helps you and you have the skill set to do it quickly

4-6 page 93 9-16 all due Wednesday   

write original problem

make division problem into a fraction -- You may be able to reduce/simplify the fraction through power of 1

Then solve the problem however you desire (guess & check, stack’em, or old’school division); problem must be solved with decimal # no writing “remainder”
**super important reminder, you only have to divide up to the thousandths place; just round final answer to the hundredths place. For example: 20 divided by 30 = 0.66666666666 stop at 0.666 and round it to 0.67

*you may estimate if it helps you and you have the skill set to do it quickly

Chapter review page 148 1-15 all show your work due Thursday

Chapter review page 168-169 1-16 all show your work due Friday

Test on chapters 4, 6, and 7 Friday

Problem of the week due on Friday

History and Language Arts:

Read the article:  First Thanksgiving Set Important Example read by Tuesday

*take notes on it or highlight it.  Will be used in our compare and contrast article.

click here for all the Thanksgiving articles

Compare and Contrast essay due Friday

Your Thanksgiving and the First Thanksgiving

Use this template to get started.

*You must cite at least 5 times from articles or videos of the First Thanksgiving

*Must be typed (will be given time in class) and placed into our class’ compare/contrast Thanksgiving folder

Language Arts due Wednesday:

Xylem and Phloem Get Things Moving handout

Free-Write due Thursday

What are you thankful for?  

Hand written or shared only w/ me

Free-write due Friday

You are a turkey still alive the Friday after Thanksgiving, what is your survival story?

Thursday -- Friendship Soup

We will be making a large soup where everyone contributes their favorite vegetable.

More information to come on Tuesday.  

November 6, 2013 Day 47-Week 11

These are masks that we made with our kindergarten buddies!!

Happy Wednesday…..

This week has been flying by as we kick it up a notch with some final assessments, roll out using our Chromebooks even more and we work earnestly on our Common Core write-ups.

Today all the kids brought home important paperwork for Outdoor Education week.  We used three different colors so you can make sure to fill out all of this great information.  The generic field trip form is two-sided and also contains the climbing wall release form.   

We had an early morning discussion about camp, then we discussed how www.ixl.com, www.scootpad.com , the typing program and www.khanacademy.org all give nice little “report cards” that show the time spent on them and what is their completion effort(s).  While walking around servicing the needs of 32 students can keep me somewhat distracted regarding if students are on the correct websites, the report card reports will help with those students that need that type of encouragement.  

We also discussed about the merits of these programs and how they help us all practice and build up our skills.   This article really does state this distinctly:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/

If you have time it would be great if you could ask your son/daughter what are the websites that we use and what do they find effective or not effective.  

We did learn how to move a folder into your Google Drive, how to copy and create a Google document and then they began working on their Common Core product.  We reviewed how to cite and make reference to materials and we also re-reviewed how citing where your facts/information come from are key components of the new Common Core.  

Students were given 45 minutes to start that today.

We also reviewed yesterday’s multiplying a decimal number by another decimal number.  We then previewed tonight’s homework of dividing a decimal number by another decimal number.

Here are our notes.

Here is access to all of my last three years of math notes.

We did earn a super job with our rotation into singing today.  It is great whenever the class can express that type of respect with Mrs. Jones.

Finally we ended the day with our monthly math project and our weekly math project.

Kind regards,
Mr. Hubbard

Homework for the week:

7-4 page 162  13-22 all  due Thursday

1. original problem

2. write as a fraction and get rid of the decimal in the denominator

3.  divide (may use guess & check, stack or traditional)

4-5 page 90-91 8-17 all  due Friday

1. write original problem

2. estimate the dividend and the divisor and find a quotient

3.  solve for the quotient using the original numbers  (may use guess & check, stack or traditional)

4. verify that your estimated quotient and your final quotient make sense

****Friday test on sections: 4-3, 4-4, 6-3, 6-4, 7-3 and 7-4

Math problem of the week and the problem of the month are all due on Friday.

Prime or composite handout is Due on Thursday

Poisonous Animals handout is due on Wednesday

Editorials handout is due Friday  --- you must write the editorial!!

Free-Write:

A free free write