Week 9 – Time to Fall Back

 

A Week in Review

October 29^th – November 2^nd 

 

Halloween was a success in Room 210 this year; many thanks go out to the parents who helped plan, organize and facilitate our fun celebration!  I really couldn’t do it without your help and support! 

Don’t forget to turn your clocks back one hour and “Fall Back” on Sunday!!  One extra hour of sleep (let’s hope our kids actually sleep in) will be such a treat! 


Virtue Awards:
Zach E. was awarded a Virtue Award for showing RESPONSIBILITY by being focused and completing 100% of his class work and homework assignments!

Lauren S. has been awarded Virtue recognition for her KINDNESS and HELPFULNESS this week.  She took care of a hurt classmate and is helping Mr. K to complete one of his student teaching homework assignments!

 
Reading:
This week we read a realistic fiction text, "Elisa's Diary" by Doris Luisa Oronoz. We analyzed the theme (the big idea or lesson the author wanted the reader to know) in this selection. We used an inference map to pull out evidence from the text to support our choice of theme: "You have to work hard to overcome obstacles". Students worked in teams to discuss their thinking and learn from each other.

Writing:
Our second memoirs are in the works! Students drafted a memoir and then used strategies that they learned in class to go back and find the climax of their memoir and "EXPLODE THE MOMENT"! Students worked to choose descriptive words that would describe the intensity of the scene for their reader. We also looked at several Newbery winners and read their opening paragraphs. We used these published authors' works to generate ideas on how to revise our own beginnings to HOOK our readers! The diligence and hard work of writing the rough draft and revising so willingly was impressive! I'm so proud of the students' focus and excellence!

Math:
We are racing through this third Math unit; this last week we constructed pictographs and interpreted the data shown.  Students also worked to round larger numbers (millions and hundreds of millions) with and without visual aids.  I think the highlight would be students working in pairs to create their own animal by combining existing animal (i.e. camel + cat = camet), describe it, and then use their knowledge of larger numbers to write a creative story problem to solve about this creature. The students loved coming up with the animal (my personal favorite was the Seadog = Seahawk + Husky) I don't think they even realized they were hard at work using their critical thinking math brains to construct a complex story problem!

Science:

At this point in the year, we’ve most likely conducted at least 7 experiments so far!  Five of these learning experiments have involved our Stream Tables.  This week, students were asked the question:  How does increasing the slope affect the flow of water?  Does this increase, decrease or have no effect on the water flow (aka, the size of the Delta created).  Students worked in groups to conduct the experiment and next week we will analyze the results, identify the variables, and write a conclusion.

 

Thank you for another fabulous week of 5th grade!

Have a wonderful weekend!

~Mrs. Hatlestad

Upcoming Events:

6-Nov - PTA General Assembly meeting
9-Nov - Professional day - NO SCHOOL
12-Nov - Veterans Day - NO SCHOOL
13-Nov - BSF Phonathon begins
14-Nov – Veterans Day Assembly 8:15 AM
16-Nov - SPIRIT DAY!
22-23 Nov – Thanksgiving - NO SCHOOL