Butter Braids Fundraiser:
The Camp Edwards fundraiser kicked off on March 31st with an exclusive tasting of the delicious Butter Braids. Now that students have their order forms in hand, they are encouraged to sell to family and friends. Please note that all orders, and money, are due in by Friday April 17th. Happy selling! Field Trip to Thomas Middle School: We just returned from our field trip today to Thomas Middle School, where students learned more about their future middle school, walked the hallways, and all of what TMS has to offer. It is an exciting time of year for our Ivy Hill fifth graders! Wax Museum: The much anticipated Wax Museum preparation concluded last month and I am so proud of the amazing job everybody did. They wrote accurate and thoughtful speeches, practiced their index cards and presented impeccably! See the attached Animoto slideshow for a quick recap of our grand historical figures. Kudos on a job well done! Wax Museum Video Reading: Did you know that April is National Poetry month? To help celebrate, we will be reading a variety of poetry from acclaimed poets. To develop deeper meaning, we will identify poetic devices, interpret the figurative language, and analyze literal and inferential ideas. For the book project, students will read at least five poems, pick one poem of their choice to interpret, memorize a poem (if possible), and finally present to class. We will begin our Westward Expansion unit that aligns with our upcoming chapter in History Alive by beginning a historical novel study..tomorrow! Finally, we will continue working with word parts, specifically Latin word roots, identifying words with these roots, and analyzing their meaning. Students have also been looking closely at how affixes, like prefixes and suffixes, can greatly vary word meaning. Math: We are wrapping up Unit 6 by the first week of April. We will then move right In Unit 7 of Everyday Math, where we will begin fine tuning our current knowledge base of the following concepts: exponential notation, scientific notation, order of operations, and adding and subtracting negative numbers. Be sure to ask your child to introduce you to “Aunt Sally” or “PEMDAS’, both are acronyms to help them remember the order of operations. Resources and IXL link can be found under the Math tab, Unit 7 Resources. Students are asked to practice specific skills that reinforces that lessons learned in class. An extra 15 minutes of IXL homework for this unit should be the expectation. Of course, this is in addition to any other math homework. Thank you for your support. Add math tab link here. History Alive: We just finished learning about the Bill of Rights, what lead theses amendments to be written, and how they affect us today. Then we will move straight to the Westward expansion unit which includes topics on Manifest Destiny, settling the West, and the diverse people of the West. WEX Writing: We just wrapped up response to literature essays in March, and delved right into expository writing. It’s a new form that many students had not been directly exposed to. I was really impressed with the choice of topics, and the reasons and examples they used to support their statements. They have nailed the traditional five paragraph essay! We will move from nonfiction to fiction writing in April, where students will be writing fictional short stories, with an emphasis on creating vivid, believable characters. I know students are really looking forward to exploring their creative writing skills with this end-of-the-year Wex unit. Reminders and Links:
PARCC is finally upon us. We already started with our first assessment today, English-Language Arts, and will take an assessment daily until we conclude on Friday of this week. Below is the fifth grade testing schedule for the week. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
WEX: We are putting the finishing touches on our final response to fiction essay. As part of the writing process, students have cultivated thoughtful leads as part of their introduction into the essay, and are learning to use effective transitions between their two moments. We learned to identify the character traits from the novel we read, The Liberation of Gabriel King, by K.L. Going, and found moments in the text that exemplified these traits. Students are also able to identify showing details and direct quotes within these moments to support the character’s traits. Reading & Wax Museum: Our genera for March is biographies and autobiographies, and it is also when we hold the much anticipated Wax Museum. Students have selected important historical figures and will be reading and sequencing their person’s life in preparation for their written monologue. We will complete the reading and notetaking portion in class, but students may need to supplement with additional reading at home to ensure they have a good grasp of their figure’s important milestones and contributions to society. More information will be sent home in the next two days. For now, save the date for the evening of March 18th. History Alive: We are wrapping up the Watery Earth unit over the next few days, and will be directing our full attention shortly to learning about the United States Constitution and the three branches of government. To reinforce the concept of checks and balances, students are going to create a poster project that is a metaphor for how the U.S. branches of government are interdependent on each other. Math: We have been working with Mrs. Burns on our exciting Dream Room project. Once PARCC testing is finished, we will resume working on the project and finalize our financial allocations to ensure we have budgeted successfully for our ultimate dream room! Before spring break, we will begin Unit 6 of Everyday Mathematics. Students will be revisiting adding and subtracting fractions, and finding the common denominators to cement these concepts. We will also learn to read stem and leaf charts, investigate the effect of a sample size and be able to use and interpret data from surveys. We have been lucky since the snow days with a mild January month. As I look forward to February I hope that our luck continues. Here’s an overview of curriculum for the month of January and February.
WEX: Students were excited to receive their very own copy of the Liberation of Gabriel King by K.L. Going to read, and more importantly, annotate in. The novel will be used in conjunction with our WEX response to literature writing unit two. Annotating is valuable skill they will carry with them as they go to middle school and beyond. In grammar this month, we will be covering pronouns, their antecedents, subject and object pronouns and pronoun-verb agreement. Reading: We are wrapping up our January mystery book review and students are working on uploading their recorded book reviews to their blogs. For the month of February our genre is going to be fantasy. We have started reading a whole class novel, Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt. We will look at fantasy noticings, and will also work on applying our C-E-I-E-I-O extended response strategy to cite text evidence for our ideas about the characters and themes in the novel. The PARCC test is right around the corner, and will begin the first week of March. The 5th grade team is working to prepare our students for this new assessment. Test samples have been made available for teachers to utilize to familiarize students with how the PARCC test is different from the previous ISAT tests students are used to. A focus we have for this month is to familiarize students with the new format of the PARCC. Math: Hands on Equations was a raging success last month. Students now know how to solve algebraic equations and better prepared to sixth grade with this new understanding. In February, we will continue working on Unit 5 to explore mixed numbers, compare and order fractions, find equivalent fractions, practice turning fractions into decimals and percents, and review properties and constructions of bars and graphs. Please encourage your child to continue to practice these skills on IXL. Students who practice consistently are better able to apply the concepts consistently and accurately. We will also look at PARCC related math assessments to familiarize students with these new assessments and better prepare them for the test in March. Science: The Watery Earth unit is in full swing. We are learning about surface water and students are realizing what a precious and limited resource we have right now. To reinforce these ideas, We are working with Mrs. Polita and Mrs. Fajks in the LMC to research water pollution issues all over the world. Once we have gathered, analyzed and synthesized our information, we will be creating public service announcements with the assistance of Mrs. Fajks to disseminate our message and call to action. While we are taking a break from History Alive at this time, we continue to focus on several social studies skills such as Daily Oral Geography (G.O.D.) to reinforce map and geographical skills. We continue to stay abreast of local, state, national and international issues with the current events self-selected articles of interest. And of course we read the weekly issue of Time for Kids and use it as a launching off point to discuss many topics that affect our world today! In Writing, we explored story elements and character traits by designing our very own storyboards. Students exaggerated these characteristics as a way of exemplifying their character’s trait. We used careful word choice, sequencing of events, illustrations and comic relief to bring our characters’ traits to life. This month, we will return to WEX writing with response to literature. Each student will receive their own individual copy of the novel, The Liberation of Gabriel King by K.L. Going, to read closely and annotate.
A reading strategy we focused on in December is questioning the text. We used the non-fiction text George vs. George by Rosalyn Schanzer to ask meaningful questions. Book clubs were our focus for novel studies as well in December. We chose a books based on our interest. Students met in their student-led discussion groups to identify different author’s crafts, like mood, point of view, irony, flashback, foreshadowing, figurative language and symbolism. In addition, students were able to analyze story elements like setting, conflict, characterization, conflicts, as well as reading strategies they learned to improve their understanding of the text. This month, our reading genre will be mystery. Students will write a response to literature letter and create a persuasive presentation on their novel. In math, we completed unit 4 on division. Starting this week, we will take a detour from Everyday Math to learn about algebra with Hands-On-Equations, a hands-on algebraic program that introduces algebraic concepts in a child friendly approach. This program opens the door to understanding more complex and abstract algebraic concepts, and the students really enjoy it too! We will then begin unit 5 also this January. This unit covers fractions, decimals and percents, as well as reading a graphs and data analysis. IXL Math Links: Adding & Subtracting Fractions: M1 - M23 Decimals: C1 - C18, Adding & Subtracting Decimals: 1 - E 8 Percents: V 8 - V 12 Graphs & Data: S1 - S16 Personalized Learning was the subject of choice in December. Students explored topics that interested them and wrote questions to help them further explore the topic. We used Bloom’s Taxonomy of Questioning to learn how to write open ended questions that allowed us to search, gather, analyze and interpret our research to come up with new ideas and answers to our questions. While this PL is considered a mini-project. Students gained valuable habits of minds skills that can be applied across all learning, as well as gear them for the more rigorous expectations of middle school. We also completed chapter 13 of History Alive which focused on how the Continental Army won the Revolutionary War. Students were able to relate to different sides of the war with an introductory tug-of-war activity we completed prior to starting the chapter. It was a lot of fun, but more importantly, students were able to relate to both the British and the Colonists' motivation for winning, and gain a better understanding of how the war was won. This month, we will switch back to science with the Watery Earth unit. Writing: We are having a great run with poetry during writing time. We learned how to write several different types of poems, like haikus, tankas, cinquains, free verse... just to name a few. More importantly, we will be writing our own poems and applying poetic devices and sensory language to elevate the quality and enjoyment of our poems. In additional we are exploring authentic poetry from well known authors to expand our appreciation and knowledge of poetry. It is proving to be a fun and exploratory unit!
Reading: We just concluded our second round of novels. Next, we will begin a book club where we will read the book of our choice along with 2 to 3 other students. Book clubs are a fun way to share a common reading experience and gain a deeper understanding through book discussions, analyzing the literary elements, and the author’s craft. We are also focusing on close reading non-fiction and asking questions during our shared reading time. Students will each get a copy of George Vs. George by Rosalyn Schanzer to read and analyze important elements. Non-fiction articles are due on December 10th. Book Club Overview December Letter to Peer Math: Daily IXL practice continues to be an important part of our daily practice and review of skills. I am providing the link to the next skills I would like everyone to focus on as we go into our next unit. In unit four, we will review multiplication and division facts, practice division with whole numbers and remainders, recognize decimal places to the thousandths place, write a division number story, make magnitude division estimates, and interpret the remainder. Xtramath IXL - Division Social Studies: We just concluded chapter 12 on the Declaration of Independence and will begin chapter 12 on The Revolutionary War. To review related videos and the chapter tutorial go to the link below: History Alive Chapter 13 Ivy Hill is hosting the second Geography Bee this year. Each classroom will have seven round and students will answer various geography questions about local and world geography. Finalists will advance to the school-wide finals competition in January. Here are a few links you can go on to begin sharpening your skills for the upcoming Bee. Sample Questions Study Guide: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/sample-questions/ Daily GeoBee Challenge Quiz: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/quiz/today/ GeoBee Training Quiz: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/games/puzzlesquizzes/quizyournoodle-geog raphy-bee Wow! What a phenomenal Halloween party we had last Friday. Thank you room moms for such intricate planning and a memorable event. The activities were very creative; the games were fun and safe, and the treats were delicious. What else can a 5th grader ask for! Here is a round-up of the coming month’s curriculum happenings:
Link to the Halloween Party Video Writing: We are almost finished with our WEX narratives! The final piece is finally coming together after going through the writing process of brainstorming, drafting, revising, proofreading and publishing. Next, we will move on to learning more about poetry, which we are all extremely excited about. We will study different types of poems like Haikus, Limericks, couplets, triplets, quatrains, cinquains and free verse; we plan to take a closer look at the poetic devices, their features and culminate the unit by creating our own poems. In grammar, we will be covering possessive nouns, action verbs and verb tenses. Reading: We have started switching during our guided reading block for novel groups. The three books we’re currently reading are My Brother Sam is Dead, Toliver’s Secret and Fighting Ground. All three novels reference the pre-revolutionary war period that align with our History Alive curriculum. During shared reading time, we are learning to use good reading strategies from the Comprehension Toolkit. We are working on activating and connecting to new learning using a variety of non-fiction sources, like TKF, National Geographic and other non-fiction sources. We are analyzing text features and discussing how they improve our comprehension of the text. Our reading genre for the month of November is non-fiction. Math: In Unit three, we are exploring congruent figures, angles, using a geometry template, compass and a straight edge, making tessellations and more. While I am very pleased with the progress many students have made with mastering their math facts, they can continue to benefit from additional practice, especially with their division facts. In math workshop, we continue to work on grade level skills in small, guided group settings. During center time, students are logging into IXL to practice the targeted concepts and skills we are learning in small groups. Oftentimes, these lessons are also assigned for homework as extra practice. Link to Unit 3 On-line Resources IXL - Geometry Link XtraMath Social Studies: The fifth grade attended their first field trip to view the Historical Reenactment at Olive School. It was a great trip and students reflected on their experience by creating thoughtful presentations that were posted to their blogs. We wrapped up chapter 10 by analyzing the Boston Massacre and wrote letters expressing our views on the event. We are now learning about patriots and loyalists and the arguments they made for or against going to war with the British. Link to the Historical Reenactment Video Social Studies Link History Alive Tutorial Khan Academy Word Work: Students are mastering their differentiated word lists that cover various spelling patterns, while taking a closer look at syllabication, digraphs, blends, word parts and affixes. We are also learning to identify and apply similar patterns in our reading and writing, and in our weekly spelling test. In the next couple of weeks, I will be sending home the conference time. Please let me know if any changes or conflicts in schedule come up. Otherwise, I look forward to meeting with you and sharing your child’s progress so far this year. Link to Student E-Portfolios Link to Class Calendar It’s been a busy month in September. Students have done a great job learning the classroom routines and getting adjusted to 5th grade academics and expectations. Here is an overview of what’s happening in each subject as well as what to look forward to in the month of October.
WEX: We are now able to stay focused on a moment while writing, and we can write showing sentences instead of telling sentences by adding strong, action verbs. We also reviewed subjects and predicates and played different relay games to reinforce main verbs and nouns. In grammar, we are learned to identify different parts of speech, and fixing run-on sentences and fragments. More importantly, we are working on applying those skills across the curriculum when we write. Reading: Our reading workshop routines are established and students are working independently and with their reading groups. Stations include meeting in literature circles, working on the spelling program Words Their Way and/or Lexia, Reading-to-Self, and meeting as a whole group for guided mini-lessons. So far, we’ve talked about how to be good readers and apply important strategies, like monitoring our comprehension. We started responding to literature by writing weekly and monthly reading responses. Each month we focus on a different genre for our independent book studies.The book reports for the month of September are now all complete and ready to view by going on the Weebly website. Students have done a fantastic job this first month! Our genre study for the month of October is historical fiction. We’re now discussing and finalizing selections and will begin to complete a “noticings” bookmark while reading to guide our understanding. Link to Weebly E-Portfolios Math: We also have a workshop model in math where I instruct students in guided math groups. Students then rotate through stations to work on practicing their number sense, and applying new concepts with a partner and independently. Unit two skills cover the following: to multiply and compare decimals, subtract numbers using the trade-first method, make magnitude estimates, and use the probability meter. We also started a problem solving unit where we read through word problems and complete a four-step problem solving process while using different strategies. Unit three will cover geometry. In this unit, students will explore congruent figures, use a geometry template and a straight edge, make tessellations and more. Xtramath should continue to be practiced daily at home to improve math fact memorization, accuracy and speed. In addition, IXL has been added to extend and expand the concepts we’re learning in class. The following IXL links cover the concepts we’re working on in class. IXL Decimals IXL Rounding IXL Multi-Step Problem Solving Science: We are concluding the Human Body Unit with our digestive system. Students learned about six body systems; the digestive, respiratory, circulatory, nervous, muscular and skeletal systems. We will be wrapping up the unit in the next few days with a project that integrates our understanding of how all the systems work together, followed by a final test scheduled for Friday. Next, we turn our attention to social studies, starting with the colonial and pre-revolutionary war period. In preparation for this unit, we are planning on taking our first field trip to Olive School on Thursday, October 9th, to attend the Historical Reenactment. Thank you for sending back the permission slips and payment. 5th Grade Science Blog Link Please check the class calendar regularly for weekly and monthly happenings. Extended assignments are also posted like the monthly genre book report, independent letter, and current events schedule. And as always, please contact me at any time should you have any questions or concerns. Ms. Mekky’s Classroom Calendar 5th Grade Daily Schedule We’re up and running in room 255 at Ivy Hill. My great new bunch of 5th graders are in the process of cementing their daily routines and schedules. It is very exciting to see they’re so ready to delve into their 5th grade year.
We are now into all of our units of study and homework has been getting sprinkled in steadily. I will be outlining and giving brief summaries of the classroom learning in my monthly blog communications. In addition, I will regularly post important happenings, student projects, class pictures and more with links on Twitter and via e-mail. Please check our class blog and calendar regularly to stay abreast of our ongoing learning. WEX: We have started our first unit of study, narrative writing. with daily mini-lessons that focus on different aspects narrative writing such as focusing on one moment to better show details in descriptive writing. I have really enjoyed reading their first batch of writing samples and will work to continue to hone and develop these skills. Reading: We have been talking about building good reading habits during our reading time. Students are learning to improve their reading stamina, and practice effective reading behaviors while reading independently or with someone else. Our first genre study for the month of September is realistic fiction. As part of the genre study, students will be asked to complete a report on their independent reading novel, which is due the end of September. We will be using the Comprehension Toolkit again this year to expand on their use of the reading strategies, starting off with monitoring our comprehension while reading. The reader’s response binder will be incorporated in conjunction to keep track of the books we’ve read, genres studied, response to literature, taking notes and logging in the books read during the school year. Thanks to everyone who brought in the additional binder and 5 tab dividers. Math: We have started the first unit on number theory. This unit builds on students’ understanding of factors and products by working with rectangular arrays to better understand multiplication, practice factoring, introduce prime, composite and square number and introduce exponents and square roots concepts. In addition to our Everyday Math program, students have been working on their math facts, building their automaticity, speed and accuracy when recalling their basic math facts by completing timed tests in class and logging onto XtraMath daily. Students should spend about 10 to 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, on XtraMath in addition to their daily homework time. It is essential that we have all these facts under our belt before proceeding to more complex units. Thank you for your support on the home front! Science: In science, we are studying the human body and will look at the major body systems including the skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, nervous and digestive system. This week, we created a model to represent a movable limb which students will be able to take home to share their understanding of how a limb moves with their families. They are loving the explorations, and more importantly, show their understanding of the important concepts and ideas through them. While we will not begin social studies until we are done with the first science unit, we have started our daily oral geography, where students build their understanding of geography and current events through daily 5 minute exercises. While brief, DOG helps to build and expand on their current geographical understanding our our local and world communities. I’m looking forward to a very busy and productive September. Stay tuned for upcoming links and happenings in our classroom via e-mail and our classroom blog. |
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June 2015
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