September 10, 2013 Day 9-Week 3

Tuesday

A quick one today.

We switched things up and did math early in the day due to the math test.  

We reviewed last night’s homework and then discussed tonight’s homework regarding using “mental math” and this week’s lessons on rounding.  Essentially these lessons are real world math skills that people use frequently when confronted with numbers outside of a math class.  I discussed people use these skills when they need to quickly estimate or figure out a guesstimate and being accurate isn't paramount.  

We then took our first math test of the year.  

We had a long discussion about being safe on the internet, protecting your password and how easily it is to acquire spyware/virus when suffering the internet.  We also discussed how to log onto the computers in the computer lab.  

We then had our first technology hour in the computer lab today.  There were some challenges, some inexplicable computer happenings and there was not air-conditioning in our antiquated computer lab.  

We then discussed expectations for tomorrow’s brain dissection, we discussed the reptilian brain  and then we began discussing this amazing video that changed how I view stress & the brain.  If you have 12 minutes, I would strongly recommend watching it.  

Please note since we will be doing Brain Week reflection during Wednesday and Thursday evening, I further lessened the reading requirement for the week (see the changes below in weekly homework).

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework for the week:

Math:

Page 25 1-26 all due on Wednesday

Page 28-29 1-29 all due Thursday

Page 30-31 1039 all due Friday

Blazing Arrow due Wednesday

Language Arts and History:

The Female Moses due Thursday

Social studies book: 167-170 due Wednesday

Vocab Cards due on Friday:

legislative branch, congress, executive branch, veto, judicial branch, federalism, suffrage, safeguard, patriotic and National Anthem

Free-Write due Friday:

What’s something you've won and how did you win it?

Read 20 minutes every evening

parent autograph

Brain Week Work:  (due on Wed., Thursday and Friday)

What did you learn about the human brain and how will this make you a better student?

September 9, 2013 Day 8-Week 3

Glorious Monday.

FYI -- our DES Jaws-a-thon has begun.  On Friday we were short some envelopes and donation forms.  .  I promise to get those to you ASAP.  The DES Jaws-a-thon is a great way to encourage your son/daughter to get moving which increases blood to the brain.  It is also a wonderful fundraiser for our PFC.  

Common Core:

Myths and Truths with the Common Core from the Washington Post

How should California prepare for the new tests?  Pros/Cons

Some parents are upset about math changes & also far less fiction

New York Times does a great job of explaining their interpretation of the Common Core changes.

Also no outdoor recess or activities due to the lowered air quality caused by the Mount Diablo fires.  

Today we continued from last week with some minor assessments.  We have just about completed our initial assessments therefore expect soon for us to have more inspirational learning time within our school days.

Maniac Magee was a great read today.   Maniac is dealing with being teased because he is a white person living in a predominantly black neighborhood.  Eventually the bullying escalates into a vandalism incident where his it is made known that he is not wear people believe he should be.   Therefore we had several great opportunities to write and discuss:

1. Why do people tease others that are different?

2. Student’s opinions & experiences about race and racial divides.  

**These are great topics to ask your son/daughter about what they feel about this.

Math:

We did an extensive review of the chapter 1 key concepts.  

The main the goal is to identify place value up to the hundred billions and also identify smaller place value into the thousandths place.  

Notes of what we practiced today can be found in today’s notes.  

Social Studies and Language Arts --  

We discussed the beauty of the Constitution.  The difference between democracy and a republic.  We used American Idol as a loose example of the difference between choosing democratically and electing a representative to vote for you..  

Notes of what we discussed can be found in today’s notes.  

Practice with being organized and planning out our week.  

Upon returning from lunch students were shown a role-modeled version of me completing a lucky student’s day planner.  I showed them how to write and organize their day planner so they will know how to attack this week’s learning opportunities.  

Students were then given 25 minutes to begin working on tonight’s and this week’s homework.  

**Students were strongly encouraged to begin working ahead, especially in social studies so the homework could be appropriately dispersed throughout the week.  

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework for the week:

Math:

Handout Topic 1 a due Tuesday

*test and turning in your math notebook is on Tuesday

Page 25 1-26 all due on Wednesday

Page 28-29 1-29 all due Thursday

Page 30-31 1039 all due Friday

Blazing Arrow due Wednesday

Language Arts and History:

The Female Moses due Thursday

Social studies book: 167-170 due Wednesday

Social studies book: 171-174 due Friday **this represents a change from earlier today

Vocab Cards due on Friday:

legislative branch, congress, executive branch, veto, judicial branch, federalism, suffrage, safeguard, patriotic and National Anthem

Free-Write due Friday:

What’s something you’ve won and how did you win it?

Read 20 minutes every evening

parent autograph

Brain Week Work:  (due on Wed., Thursday and Friday)

What did you learn about the human brain and how will this make you a better student?

September 5, 2013 Day 6-Week 2

Happy Thursday!!

First note:  We could really use some more volunteers to help out with the brain laboratory that will be going on next Wednesday.   So far we have just 1 volunteer.  We really could use at least 4 more volunteers.  You would help our class’ laboratory from 8:45-11:45 am.  

Click here for more information

Fill out the form above or email me back if you can help out.

FYI -- I was too soon on the math book being on-line.  It will be up and running sometime next week.  For now the students need to kick it old’school and bring home their physical book.

Same begin to today as yesterday.  Students completed morning assessments for 45 minutes followed by Maniac Magee reading/writing.   Students began taking notes on some of the racial and financial divides that east within the town.   Maniac Magee appears to be naively oblivious to all of the towns troubles as he freely befriends people of all colors and socioeconomic status.  

Math:

More work and practice with decimals and place values.

Getting students to grasp the concept that decimals & fractions represent extremely small parts of just 1 whole is one of the more difficult but foundational concepts we cover in 5th grade.  

Therefore we watched this classic 1977 video.  I stopped frequently so we could discuss how this ties into place value and also tied in some exponent knowledge.  

In order to collect more information where they stand with writing and also further cultivate that writing voice -- the students participated in a free-write about this photo:

http://mashable.com/2013/09/03/amazing-baseball-foul-ball-photo/

We are going to share out their writing tomorrow.  From walking around and observing, the students had a variety of creative ideas.   Ask them what they chose to write about.  

We also reviewed the previous two evening’s reading/writing about the debates and formation of the USA Constitution.   

Ask them how an egg and bacon breakfast is just like the difference between a confederation and a federal government.  

see notes here to help stimulate their memory

Wall of Random -- students are each allowed to bring a photo, drawing, cartoon, art work that is no bigger than 5 by 7;  Whatever they bring in should be something that is important or matters to them.  They will then need to share with the class the significance of what they are sharing.  Whatever they bring may be traded out for something else throughout the school.  Artifacts must be school appropriate and absolutely no potter-humor.   It is fun to see the wall evolve and change throughout the year.  

Students also were shown the instructions for our first book project and shown an example of one creative way to complete the project.   This is not something that can be completed at a 5th grade level within 1 evening.   I  recommend completing 1 or 2 sections per week beginning three weeks out.  

Here are the expectations:

The NFL season starts in 30 minutes.

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Math:

Page 18 and 19  (all problems) due on Friday

**please note, homework is from the hardcover book and students must write both numbers

Free-Write due on Friday

Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube or roll it?  What is the advantage of your method?  

1 full page or 20 minutes (parent signature if using the minutes)

Social Studies and Language Arts:

163-167 ead, answer questions, under-line and for sure do the summary question due on Friday

Vocab:

Make Flash Cards due on Friday:

confederation, federal, compromise, federalist, antifederalist, amendment, preamble, liberty, republic, principle

Read 20 minute each evening

Get parent’s autograph for the day planner

Septemer 4, 2013 Day 5-Week 2

Day 5 - Week 2

Happy Wednesday!!  

Thank you so much for the twenty families that were able to make it to last night’s Back to School night.   

Regarding today:

We are working on math assessments and language art assessment during the first of the morning. This is to give us a uniformed baseline regarding where are students are after summer break.  

Maniac Magee -- today we learned more about the exploits of Maniac.  The most intense chapter was the showdown between Maniac and McNab.  Ask your son/daughter to explain how a frog played a roll in the game.  

Math -- more review on decimals and place values.  Specifically tenths (1/10), hundredths (1/100) and thousandths (1/1000).  

We had a 2nd quiz today post lesson.  The biggest challenge for students is to remember to line up those decimals points.  You will see example from our notes today.  

Singing w/ Ms. Jones -- rumor on the street is that the class treated her with more respect than last week.  

We did a nice writing art project after lunch.  (more examples below)

We ended the day doing more team building notecards where we share about ourselves and to guess who is sharing.  

Back to School Night:

Click on the links below for handouts:

Would you like to volunteer?  Let me know by completing this form.  

Would you like to help next week with a “brain lab?”  please let me know asap.

Parent Survey

Agenda

Wired article on the importance of grit.

Common Core starting point

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Math:

Page 12 and 13  (1-16 all) due on Thursday

Page 18 and 19  (all problems) due on Friday

**please note, homework is from the hardcover book and students must write both numbers

Free-Write due on Friday

Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube or roll it?  What is the advantage of your method?  

1 full page or 20 minutes (parent signature if using the minutes)

Social Studies and Language Arts:

159-162 read, answer questions, under-line and for sure do the summary question due on Thursday

163-167 ead, answer questions, under-line and for sure do the summary question due on Friday

Vocab:

Make Flash Cards due on Friday:

confederation, federal, compromise, federalist, antifederalist, amendment, preamble, liberty, republic, principle

Read 20 minute each evening

Get parent’s autograph for the day planner

Day #2 of 2013 2014

Day 2

We started off strong.  We had 30 of 32 day-planners signed and people thoroughly completed their first homework assignments.  

We reviewed the Friend’s Day worksheet and students started their Summer Reading handout.  

We discussed weekly free-writes and my expectations regarding them.  Students will be working on a weekly free-write throughout the year.  It really is a weekly assignment where they work on developing their writing voice and being creative.  So students are not to be overly concerned with spelling and grammar rather they build up tolerance to create on a consistent basis.  

The goal is one-page or 20 minutes whatever comes first.  If they only can write five or six lines in thirty minutes we will build up our skills throughout the year where they become more prolific.  

Today’s free-write was “Tell me about your family….”  they could interpret that anyway they wanted and could describe their family however they wanted.

We covered more basic procedures that will make the days go smoothly.  

We also went to the library and “check out our books.”  The new system, year two, requires all textbooks to be checked out to the students using our school’s library tracking system.  It helps the district keep better tabs on purchased resources and they can reallocate books based on class sizes at all the schools.  However it does take some time to check everyone out.  

We began reading our first core-lt book.  The book is titled Maniac Magee  and is written by Jerry Spinelli

Today they book’s early chapters describe the “legend” of Maniac Magee and they discuss about the series of tragedies that have fallen upon Maniac during his first 11 years of life.  

Math time -- we reviewed last night’s math homework.  

Today’s lesson was about differentiating between numbers and putting them in order.  I encouraged students to use the handout with the list of all the place values through 100 billions if they need some assistance.  

The last part of the day students were given 25 minutes to work the handout “Tell Me a Little Bit About Yourself”.   Many students completed most of the 15 questions during the allotted time.  

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework:

Math pages 3 and 4 due Friday

Complete Summer Reading due Friday

Complete the “Tell Me a Little Bit About Yourself”

Read for 20 minutes

***Back to School Night is on Tuesday evening***

Wednesday #1 2013 2014

So our journey began today.

Thirty two eager to learn, yet still sleepy fifth graders.

Things that we covered today:

Mr. Hubbard's general rules:

Basic rules

• We raise our hands -- 33 people are in this room therefore it is polite to raise our hands.
• We respect each other INCLUDING OURSELVES
• We are kind to each other.  
• We have high expectations for everyone in this class.  

We covered some basic procedures that will make the class run smoothly.

For example: Water, pencils, getting up and using the restroom

We will cover more procedures over the next week.

We then took a Mr. Hubbard quiz/test.  Students were able to learn more about myself and ask me a few questions.

We also spent some time collecting and collating all of the classroom supplies. 

They had singing with Ms. Jones today.  She returned to class to inform us we were her only class of the day not to earn an outstanding review for behavior and effort.  Therefore we have our first goal for the new school year.

We covered why 10 most likely is the number our arithmetic system is based upon.  We reviewed place value for numbers up to a hundred billion.

Students were given examples of how to use their day planner.

Kind regards, 

Mr. Hubbard

Homework:

Math pages 1 and 2 due Thursday

Friendship day handout due Thursday

Read for 15 minutes -- read whatever you want.

Show mom and dad this letter (click here if it was not shown to you)  

Get your day planner signed that they reviewed all of this with you.