Day Two! 8/15/2017

Less talk about supplies and more time spent learning about each other!!

Gaming in class? Aka CLASSCRAFT
We did spend the morning discussing Classcraft. We are going to use Classcraft to both help offer parents feedback on how each student's day is going and also to have some fun. As a parent I appreciate how it allows you to limited hand out amounts of gold-coins at your discretion regarding homework @ home, studying @home and general overall effort towards learning while @ home. I am unsure if you can "take away" gold coins as a teacher can. We will find out together. Look for your parent invite in the next few days. In the meantime, ask your son or daughter to share what they learned about Classcraft today.
https://www.classcraft.com/#modal-iste-2017
https://help.classcraft.com/hc/en-us/articles/217901858-Inviting-parents-to-Classcraft


Getting to know each other time.....
We did the classic "Find someone who did ???? over the summer".  Then as an entire class, we shared out some of the similarities. Also, we began guessing who replied in what way to the day one survey titled, "This is me."  Students were then asked to answer six questions about themselves, and then we had a snowball fight!! I was attacked by 26 students all trying to bring me down with binder paper snowballs.

The Pyramid of Success
I value character, and I try to use the early part of the year to get to know each other and also make a point to discuss, write and reflect upon character issues. I use the book "Inch and Miles..The Journey to Success" written by the late John Wooden. Ask your son or daughter about 1. What is a success? 2. What is the pyramid of success? And then have them describe the four character attributes that we read about and discussed today: hard work, enthusiasm, friendship, and loyalty.

Get your head on straight
For the last year and a half, I have been using meditation in my class as a way to improve learning, specifically right after we return from our morning recess time. Numerous studies and many schools have found great success in teaching students basic breathing exercises, practice with focusing and learning to cut out the ever present stimuli in their life. We use the popular app/website called www.mindspace.com  The lessons are 100% secular, there are no references to religion, and there is absolutely no use of idols.   Much of the beginning lessons focus on observing our breathing patterns and challenging ourselves to turn our attention to how slowing our breathing and lasering our focus calms the body.  If you are skeptical, please feel sign up at www.mindspace.com. Both the website and the app will give you a free two-week trial and try the foundation lessons that we are doing at school. Also, feel free to discuss this with me if you have questions, suggestions or concerns.
Articles that discuss meditation:
The Atlantic Article
Slate's Article
Forbe's Article

I sent home a PG Movie permission slip; please consider signing it and returning it. Sometimes, especially on a Friday, we will watch part of a fun movie after lunch. The permission slip allows me to play most Pixar films and other kid particular movies.

Some people were having a challenge finding my Facebook page, so here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/mrhubbardsclassdotcom/
I like to post parent related articles there, and people are welcome to join or start a conversation regarding the articles.

I also need about ten more families to complete the survey:

Kind regards,
Mr. Hubbard

Day 1 is in the books....

It was a great day getting to know the newest group that I will spend the next 291 days forming a learning community. Yes, you have 291 days from your son or daughter becomes a middle schooler.

Supplies for days....

The first day often involves sleepy students with enthusiasm that sort of gets derailed as "we" as a class handles how to decipher all of the school supplies. We talk about what is donated and what is not given and how they may want to handle the items that they keep.  At this point, they want to keep a 3-ring binder, at least one folder, one math note book, one college ruled notebook and an envelope to hold their one to three pencils, one pen, one to two highlighters, and their markers if they choose to keep them. The extra notebooks (graphing and college ruled) may be left at home.

Items that we could still use donated to the class -- scissors. I have exactly six in my class so for art projects it would be great to have more scissors. Also, colored printing paper would be wicked awesome. Like I did tonight, in an ideal world I would send home important "please don't lose" form in a particular color. Then I could tell the parents, "hey, look for the orange colored handout in the backpack."

Long story, long....supplies take a lot longer than you imagine.

We did discuss eating in class, privileges versus rights,  using the restroom rules, changes to the bell schedule, and how to line up and go to lunch.  We also fleshed out my life and who "IS" Mr. Hubbard. Students are now well versed in my life, my likes/dislikes and where I came from.  We did do some dancing to Michael Jackon, invent some new handshakes, create some dance moves and have some movement. Finally, we did get onto the Chromebooks, joined my Google Classroom, and they answered an easy question. We also discussed our theme of "Today You, Tomorrow Me."

Please complete this quick survey, and it really does help me out. 

Also, if for some reason my brightly colored letter didn't make it home, here is my welcome message. 


Kind regards,
Mr. Hubbard

2017-2018 Is Upon Us!!

We are only five days away until our 180-school day journey begins.

This year's theme will be "Today You, Tomorrow Me!" If you have 8 minutes and you don't mind getting a case of the feels, give this a listen.  Listen to the story, "Today You, Tomorrow Me"  Or watch this part of the video (it is important to stat at 3:32):




If your child has me as their teacher this year, it will help me a ton if you could complete this form. I know you have already completed similar information for DUSD and then you had to write it on paper for the emergency forms; however, this helps me have my own readily available copy that I can save onto my hard drive. I greatly greatly appreciate you taking the 5 to 7 minutes to complete the form.

"Sleep Well to Think Well"
My son or daughter wants to know what they should do to be ready for Monday, what should I tell them?  If they haven't already, they should be going to sleep at their "typical" school bedtime. They should then also be having their alarm set for their "typical" school wake up time. If you have been napping on the importance of sleep in your child's life and your own, I will recommend watching this 12-minute video from PBS's NOVA

Anything else they should do?
They should come to school having a positive attitude towards learning, be willing to make mistakes and be kind.

My tale of "Mice and Pens"

As we get prepared for the upcoming 2017-2018 school year, I pulled up the 5th grade supply list for this year.
2017-2018 Supply List

Something seemed fishy right off the bat because I've been trying my best to repeal "erasable pens" for many years. I thought I finally had rustled up enough votes among my team that those hybrid pens would finally be removed from our list. Yet, there they were in the middle of the list.

A quick aside, my main problem with the erasable pen is my problem with almond milk, rice milk, cashew milk, etc..Those "phony" milk are NOT milk, they are nut water or something. Similarly, pen ink that "erases" is NOT pen ink.  Stay in your lane. Stop trying to be a pencil and stick to be the best pen that you can be.

We also began a few years back requesting or strongly suggesting a  "wireless-mouse." As our Chromebooks age, the mouse pad in the middle does NOT age gracefully. The closest thing to botox or plastic surgery for a Chromebook's mouse pad is the wireless mouse.

Other things that were requested for the upcoming school year that didn't make it onto the list:

colored paper -- having colored paper allows us to send home information that sticks out. 10 or 11 years have a habit of just shoving important paperwork into the Twilight Zone of their backpack.

Smaller three ring binder -- the 2-inch binder is just WAAAAAY too large for our young 10 and 11-year-olds.  A sensible 1-inch binder makes taking it out and lugging it back and forth every night much easier.

Scissors -- we have not asked for scissors in the last five years. Guess what happens to 30 scissors over five years? They become about eight small bland hardly working scissors that no kid wants to use. So we needed to replenish the classroom scissor cache.

Long story short, if your child is at Dublin Elementary School 5th grade for the 2017-2018 school year, click here to see the supply list that 5th grade intended to make public.  If you bought on-line, it will  be different from the changes we proposed. Please do not go out and purchase new things. We will make due with what we have.

Student Led Conferences.

Beginning next week we will start our student-led conferences. It is a magnificent time for the students to take the lead in their education and see that their choices are the driving forces in their success going forward.

A parent asked recently why we do student-led conferences when they do not have an opportunity to do them while in middle-school or high school. I'm confident that teachers in the upper grades would see the value in this however logistically it would challenging with all of the various classes a student takes in a given semester. Some high schools do demand a portfolio be created as criteria for graduation. I would make the argument that the self-driven collection would be a student-led evaluation/conference.

The meetings will run for 20 minutes. The students will create goals, specific areas they feel most confident in and areas that they want to focus their attention on growing. Parents and myself with have an opportunity to change or modify goals and engage in a great conversation.

I am using Google spreadsheet for parents to select a time for the student and his or her family to attend the conference. If the spot is open, then you place the student's name in the column that says."student name."  Please do not write over someone else's name and please let me know if your family can not make the meeting.  I created 41 spots for 28 students, with some early morning, some into the later evening and some after school ends. If you still can not find a time that works, please reach out to me and I can try to accommodate you. Also, you are free to bring younger siblings. They may hop onto a Chromebook, read a book or wait outside on the classroom bench.

On some rare occasions, parents have a hard time typing their name onto the Google sheet (especially with the popular iPhones). Therefore I strongly suggest using a desktop or laptop to view the link.
To protect student/family privacy, the link will come in a separate email from this posting.
I am enthusiastically waiting to meet every family!
Kind regards,
Mr. Hubbard

Monday, August 29, 2016

8:30-9:15 Circle Time

Introduce assistant teacher Ms. Walsh

Introduce each other to her

Tell us something about your weekend

9:15-10:00 Singing w/ Ms. Jones-Heinz

They did awesomely

10:00-10:15 Return the class to straighten things up and prepare for the remainder of the day

10:15-10:30 Run, Snack, and Play

10:30-10:45 Meditation (Lesson 9 of Course 1)

10:45-12:30 Rolling Out Eureka Math

Keep these two resources at your disposal:

• https://moodle.pleasantonusd.net/mod/page/view.php?id=16185
• http://www.oakdale.k12.ca.us/ENY_Math5_Modules

Notes from today regarding Eureka Math:

1. Green Book -- for class work and homework
2. The homework examples are on line...Youtube
3. The answers to the homework problems.
4. If you forget your book, all homework assignments are on-line, you may print them up. They have eliminated all excuses.

Add zero to every number

Count all the zero = the number of zeros in your answer. 10, 100 or 1000

When you multiply by 10, just add a zero at the end

12:30-12:40 GoNoodle and Birthday Celebration

12:40-1:20 Eat, Play and Get Oxygen to your head

1:20-2:00 Go over homework expectations and resources with Eureka Math

Tonight’s homework:

Module 1 and Lesson 1

Must do’s  1, 2, and 4

Should do’s 3 and 5

Superstars 6

Reading Log Fiction Week #2

30 minutes, complete front side & do activity on the backside

IXLs due on Friday

• Multiply numbers ending in zeroes (5-C.4)
• Multiply numbers ending in zeroes: word problems (5-C.5)
• Place values in decimal numbers (5-G.4)
• Model decimals and fractions (5-G.2)
• Understanding decimals expressed in words (5-G.3)

Day one in our 2016-2017 adventure

Today began the process of putting a learning community together. Therefore, we talked about some rules and procedures. We share a little about ourselves. I quizzed myself about the names. I know about 24 of the 28 students names already. I'll be at 100% by the close of the school day tomorrow. We also tried to make some sense of the supplies and clarify what do they keep and what because communal property.

We discussed the importance of reading.
We discussed why gum doesn't stay in your body beyond 24 to 72 hours.
We got up and running with "Would you rather?"

We ended the day discussing end of the day procedures, reminding them to give you homework and  practicing being released for the day.

Parent Homework

Homework Assignment #1:
If you can please complete this quick survey, I would greatly appreciate it.

I realize that you already completed this for our larger district information system. However, teachers do not have easy access to that information.  By you taking the 5 to 10 minutes to complete this survey it will help me when I need to text, email or call you since it will be in a Google file that I save on my phone, tablet, and standalone computer.

Click here to help me build up my classroom contact information.


Homework Assignment #2:

The school and my classroom will be using the web service called remind.com
If you could join my class, I can text you when I have new information. In fact, you will have the choice to receive the information as a text, a notice on a smartphone app or just as an email.
Please make sure to select the "role" of parent when signing up. 
Click here to join my remind classroom

Teaching the Teachers on August 11, 2016

As you begin today's class, it would be great if you would please complete this short quiz.

I will be showing the class answers up on the screen so they won't be 100% private.

Click here for the quiz

I'm back and where did I go?

If looks like I have left everyone, that is only partially true. I have been a writing machine. However, I moved much of my parent and student communication elsewhere.

For the students, I moved directly onto using Google Drive and Google emails.   Using these two mediums of communication allowed me to freely communicate with my students, include photos of them working throughout the class and gave us "security" of teaching in an enclosed/safe environment. I have always felt hesitant using complete names on this website since my students may not want their successes of a ten-year-old to show up in their Google search when they are twenty something years old.

For the parents, I moved onto Class Dojo and daily emails. The daily emails are the same safe environment like the one with the students. Class Dojo allows me to share immediate feedback with my students' parents regarding how my students are doing. It also allows me to share out photos with them in a safe environment where my photos can not be downloaded or saved. Class Dojo once again offers my students some safety from having their photos and work shared on the world wide web.

Another plus to using Class Dojo? It is a phone application as well. Not every parent is addicted to their email, therefore, having a phone application that cuts through the noise and gives an immediate phone notification has been extremely effective in reaching 100% of my students' parents.

For similar reasons as Class Dojo and the effectiveness of phone applications, I use Facebook to share resources and references regarding parenting, being a student and just items I find humorous.

So those are the reasons that my "official" website looks bleak and forgotten. However, I owe my parents and students more than that. As a big fan of Restaurant Impossible I have seen first hand numerous restaurants that serve amazing food and service however if the restaurant looks uninviting or rundown, it hurts the bottom line of the business. Therefore, I will be moving more of my Facebook posting onto here first, add some of my commentaries and then post it onto Facebook.

Student Council 2015 2016 Election

Click here to vote in the 2015-2016 Dublin Elementary Election 

Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Week 5

Bloom's Taxonomy

Happy Tuesday! Once again the weather dips below 90 and I am able to get out an email.

If I don’t send out an email and you are curious what went down today and a great probability that that night’s homework went down, you can check out this link for today’s date.

Here is today’s specific game plan.

What has been going on?

The biggest news is that on Monday we began strategically rotating every day from 11:45-12:30 Monday through Thursday following the Response to Intervention (RTI) model created under the rollout of No-Child-Left-Behind .  It is one of the five focuses of our district in the 2015-2016 school year, to utilize RTI with regards to our essential standards in L.A. and Math.

If you would like to learn more about RTI?  Here are some great pieces of reading below, since I am not a cable news show I tried to include articles that cover its pros and its cons

This is a great pros & cons of RTI article. A few PHDs even start debating and discussing further in the comments below the article. This is a great starting point.

A straightforward explanation of what RTI is all about.

Cut and dry definition with no cons.

This article addresses that we do not know long term if RTI works and questions some of the "heretical" defense of the system.

This author argues Combining RTI with Cognitive/Neuropsychological Assessment (not light reading)

What does that mean for our class?

It is a loss of about 15% available classroom time where the core community of 27 students are all together. Those 4,500 minutes this will be used on focused essential standards. Therefore we will work even more strategically to cover all of the other curriculum in the remaining 85% of the time so we well-rounded students in the other curriculums.   

What this first breakdown looks like is that some students will be focusing on mastering and improving their fluency in mathematical facts. Students who did not pass the 3 minutes and 50 math fact assessments will be exposed to various mathematical strategies, old-school flashcards and using technology to refine and speed up fluency.  Some students will be focusing on challenging math that expands upon our 5th-grade math knowledge. While another group will be engaging in math project that will have them use the math standards in an open-ended creative way.  The groups are flexible and ever evolving, therefore no one is issued Scarlet Letters and groups will change throughout the year.

Constitution Day -- we were able to have a discussion regarding Constitution day and the students also participated in a two-day competition to learn more about our Constitution while working in teams. About four teams were able to complete the arduous task in the three hours given. Others who did not quite complete it, are encouraged to complete the packet on their own time and earn some constitutional sweets!!

Completing our unit on Inches and Miles -- students were given time today and have until Friday to complete their write-ups regarding the pillars of the pyramid of success. Throughout the process students were given 15 to 25 minutes complete their writeups after we read and discussed two pillars at a time. Some students do not focus or maximize their time therefore this Friday due date may or may not be painful for students.

The Book Project Part of our Monday reflection and journaling has been to tell me how students are doing on their book project. There is an alarming amount of students that say they have not made much progress with their book? I appreciate their honesty, however when they are supposed to read “at least” 30 minutes every night, they should be prioritizing the reading of their book project book.  This is intended to be a well crafted and well thought out book project so they should be giving themselves time to complete the six Bloom’s Taxonomy tasks.

Math

Tomorrow is lesson 3’s test.

As you can see from today’s notes -- we brainstormed the difference between studying and homework. We brainstormed what they could use to study.

Students were told to bring home the green book, their math notebook and the homework packet. They were told which areas and modeled what type of problems to know how to do.

We also spent about 30+ minutes where some worked in pairs studying together, some reviewed their packets together and some chose to watch and practice using Khan Academy.  

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Homework:

Read for 30 minutes.

You should be working on your book project.

STUDY for tomorrow’s test.

Complete the Khan Academy task assigned to you yesterday (see announcement in the Google Classroom).  

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-fifth-grade-math/cc-5th-fractions-topic/cc-5th-add-sub-fractions/v/adding-fractions-with-unlike-denominators

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-fifth-grade-math/cc-5th-fractions-topic/cc-5th-vis-add-sub-frac-unlike-denom/e/using-visuals-to-add-and-subtract-fractions-with-unlike-denominators-

Brainpop --due by Friday is on Courts

The Monday reflection that you started in class, is due at your earliest convenience.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Stanford's Educator Night on Saturday

If I don’t send out an email and you are curious what happened that day or what should your son or daughter be working on, you can ask them to show you that day’s hyperlink document. They will need to be signed into their Google Classroom account.  Their google classroom will always have the most up to date assignments and what they did that day however this is a rough outline of what we worked on today.

You can get about a 80% look at what we did by looking at our daily game plan.  You can also try accessing it here.

• The times do change and they are not always 100% accurate because learning is dynamic and a human endeavour. Plus sometimes we add things as the day goes along.

Big things of note:

A great circle time. The students did an amazing job of listening to each other and did not side track talk for about 22 of the 27 students that shared. That is great progress. Students shared what happened this weekend, shared who was the “big dawg” in the house (the parent most likely to say, “no” to requests) and we played a brain energizing game.  

.  

Mindset is all about “YET” If you didn’t master it with an 80%, you just haven’t learned it or practiced it enough YET. We discussed this in our brains week. Studies prove that students that understand the brain and see their intelligence as something that is cultivated and grown outperform those that believe their intelligence was predetermined by Zeus or the “Math Fairy.” Not only that students with a growth mindset handle conflict and setback more successfully as they understand conflict and defeat is part of our heroic journey towards learning.

So this lead to a discussion on the importance of our math test corrections and error analysis worksheet. We are going to use this to improve upon our learning when completing our weekly and lesson assessments.  Students will have time during their morning work and during our math breakout times to work with myself or research independently why they made a mistake on the original assessment or what do they still need to learn.  

Brainpop

I assign the Brainpops and give the students time to watch and take the quizzes. I will then run the report the evening or morning they are due. Students that didn’t finish initially will receive a M on their grade. However they should take the quiz at their earliest convenience. I do not mark down for a late completion and a student may watch the movie more than once and retake the quiz more than once. They need to send me an email or show me their “My Brainpop” page that shows they completed the quiz and their score.

Monday Free-Write

20 minutes, no holds bar, write on the topic. Do not worry about grammar or spelling, focus on the skill of writing and creating. They then meet up in small groups and discuss each other’s ideas and the details that they covered.

Daily Vocabulary and Weekly Vocabulary Assessment..

4 words per week. They will have a day each to focus on the words. Then on Fridays they are given an opportunity to share out that they know what the words mean.

This week:  typical and the three different ways we use the word “standard”

Try and challenge your son or daughter to use those words throughout the week.

The common core gods do not approve of the use of bunny with place value. 

Math Lesson 2 sub lesson 4

More work with these concepts:

*10 *100 and *1000

/10  /100 and /1000

Decimal place moves to the right when you multiply by 10, 100 or 1000

Decimal place moves to the left when you divide by 10, 100 or 1000

10*10 = 102  = 100

1.4 = 1.40 = 1.4000 = 1.4000000000000000

The test on Lesson 2 is tomorrow. Students are strongly encouraged to study their green book and review their homework packet.

Both the green book and their homework packet will be collected tomorrow.

Scootpad

We successfully signed into Scootpad today.

We will be using www.scootpad.com for language arts/grammar, some math and we may try out their newly created “adaptive” spelling.

Homework for the evening:

Read for 30 minutes and have the day planner signed off that they did it.

Work on your large arduous book project

STudy for the math test tomorrow. Review your green book for Lesson 2 and review your homework packet.  Make sure you understand the various concepts covered in both.

Due Thursday completed Math Test Corrections/ Error Analysis Worksheet for problems missed in

1. End of Fourth Grade Assessment
2. Week 1 end of week daily common core math test
3. Lesson 1 Quiz

If you did not yet earn 45 or more on the district fluency - this practice your X and division.

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

Go Niners!