Happy Tuesday!!
I’ll try my best to capture Monday’s and today’s actions.
This week 5th graders throughout the district are taking some pre-testing assessments so we can analyze as a class and as individuals areas to focus on as we move towards the late April/early May testing. The assessments are not used in determining report cards however the students are strongly encouraged to practice best learning and inference skills. So that has taken up a significant amount of time both days. Tomorrow we will have one more day of completing the assessments as a class.
Math -- we are really hitting home on the idea of “estimating” before calculating their final answer. Especially with both fractions and decimals students can become confused where a decimal should be placed and learning how to quickly & effectively estimate will ensure that they are computing reasonable answers. Right now we are snaking between larger multiplication, division beyond writing “remainder” and multiplication & division w/ decimals. As with many common core math concepts this does come with some new nomenclature and strategies that were not the norm circa 1980’s/90’s. So you may hear “generic area model,” “stacking method,” “guess and check” and divide/multiply by drawing your arithmetic as a box.
Math night is tomorrow night. Once again I get to team up with Mrs. Coupe/Shaw and teach or discuss with the parents tomorrow evening. My talk and lesson will be focusing on “fractions.” The evening begins at 6:30 and I begin my presentation at 7:15. The parent academies will be taking place in my room at C-5 and the other C-Wing rooms will have math activities available for the students.
Dead American -- Google Slides and/or Poster. This week the students should be spending time in the evening working on their slides (i.e. Powerpoint) or poster. They should also be giving some thought to their dress and look for their Wax Museum performances.
We have all experienced the slow movement of time as you watch a overly verbose powerpoint slide. Therefore we have spent the last two days doing mini lessons regarding how to speak with symbolic photos or words. Students were explicitly asked to NOT copy and paste their research report and NOT to have long sentences on each slide. They were challenged yesterday to think about “at least” five epic things that their dead American did. Another way to think about it in their time period -- # (hashtags); hashtags are often used to concisely get a point across about a feeling or opinion. Therefore students want to capture their idea concisely and also capture people’s attention through minimal word choice and/or symbolic photos/drawings.
Examples discussed:
FDR -- a slide with a wheel chair and the words “overcoming physical disabilities” and a slide with an eye catching photo from WW2 and the words “our leader through the great war”
Theodore Roosevelt -- a slide with an adorable photo of a teddy bear #themanbehindtheteaddybear --- a slide with a breathtaking photo of a National Park #themanthatpreservedourparks
Their research was already done in the larger research project. The slide show and/or poster is to grab people’s attention regarding their dead American during a Wax Museum presentation where 90+ students will have set up shop and are eagerly wanting to perform. They need to sell their person and capture someone’s attention when competing against 90 other presentations. Slides with paragraphs of information is not going to get anyone’s attention.
As the internet can attest -- yes, cute adorable kitten or fluffy white innocent seals do grab everyone’s attention however students were instructed NOT to use those type of photos to garner attention. They need to be symbolic of their dead American.
We continue to plug away with the non fiction reading and written response. Here is this week’s reading/writing. Students can only meet 5th grade standards and answer the questions correctly by referring explicitly to the passages read and writing with complete thoughts.
Valentine’s Day:
The kids earned a pizza party for the entire class since they kicked so much reading butt during the December/January readathon. Therefore we are going to have our pizza party on lunch right before our Friday afternoon Valentine’s Day party. So unless your son/daughter does not like pizza, they do not have to bring a complete lunch on Friday.
Regarding Valentine’s Day:
1. Either bring a Valentine’s Day card for everyone or don’t bring any. Some students don’t even personalize the cards rather they autograph each one and that saves them the time of having to write out everyone’s name.
2. A reminder that we do have a nut free classroom. If you are bringing in candy to go with the Valentine’s Day card please keep our classroom a safe place.
The Intel Field Trip --
A special thanks goes out to Mrs. Freitas. All the teachers were wondering why were getting so much low volunteer drivers for this awesome free field trip. She pointed out that we go on a Monday where the school day ends at 2:00 p.m. however we will not return until 3:00 p.m. In reality we leave Intel at 1:30 and it all depends on the traffic Gods as we travel 680 North. However no matter what we will return later than 2:00 p.m. Therefore we have worked out the following plan in the hopes of getting 15 more driving spots:
Parents with younger siblings (1st-4th) may have their child go directly to Mrs. Cargo’s classroom (C-7) Mrs. Cargo will watch over and protect those kids until our return from the field trip. All you have to do is tell us which kid(s) to expect and which classroom they are in. We are going to utilize her 5th graders to assist in the herding of the younger ones back to room C-7.
Therefore if you were concerned about having a safe place for your 1st-4th grader(s), until we return we have that covered. Therefore if you can drive on the Intel field-trip please click onto this survey and let me know the details.
Kind regards,
Mr. Hubbard
Homework for the week:
70-71
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7-39 ODDS original problem/estimated numbers &answer / solve for the real answer
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3
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5
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day 1
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93-94
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7-35 ALL original problem, estimated numbers & answer / solve for the real answer
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4
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5
| |
114-115
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9-30 ALL Original problem, estimate numbers & answers/ solve for the real answer.
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5
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4
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Dead American Google Slide and/or Poster
Non-Fiction reading & written response due Thursday
Spelling Test and Vocab test due on Friday
Daily Vocab -- Thursday a “paragraph” based upon the vocabulary assignment is due.
Science with Ms. Katzman -- more brainpop and a reading/writing response
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