Lots of Learning and a Valentine's Day Tea

A Week in Review

February 11 - 15

 



We had a fabulous week in Room 210! A math test, a Valentine's Day celebration, and watching our completed Reading Buddies video were some of the highlights! Here is a recap of our week:

 

Virtues Awards:
Kate O. has earned a Virtues Award for showing the virtues of kindness and helpfulness. Kate is a good friend to others and she is always willing to help out whenever a need arises! Thank you Kate!

Matthew C. has earned a Virtues Award for showing the virtues of diligence and respect. Matthew is always respectful and always completes his assignments with quality work!

 

Literacy:

We read Lafff from Best Shorts by Lensey Nameioka in our Journeys textbook. Our target skill was story structure and our target strategy was infer/predict. We analyzed the story elements and used the "Elements of Thought" to discuss point-of-view and deeply analyzed the multiple conflicts in the story. It was a great practice as we work towards our critical thinking school wide goals.

 

 

Math:

Unit 4 Circles, Polygons and Angles has come to an end! We took our end-of-unit assessment on Tuesday. Mrs. Nhan was in on Wednesday to administer the Senteo Clicker pre-test for next unit, Unit 7: Multiplication and Division with Whole Numbers and Decimals. We will start that unit after the break.


Social Studies:
After creating the setting for our Story Path journey into colonial Boston, we began working together in our "families". Students were placed into groups of four and began building their family's life, from choosing a business, a family name, and their role in the family (mom, sister, uncle). The students are so excited and engaged in this Social Studies unit!

Science
Students worked on the "Saturation Puzzle" where they were given a mystery chemical and challenged to formulate a plan to figure out what the chemical was.






Health:
Nurse Daphne was a guest teacher in our room this week. We combined our class with Ms. Keenan's while Nurse Daphne taught our final Health lesson, HIV/AIDS. Her lesson focused on awareness, education, and terminology. The students were attentive and asked really good questions.


Valentine's Day:
A special thanks to Karen R. (Rose) and Gina M. (Katie) for the lovely Valentine's Day Tea they worked so hard to put together for our students! In keeping with our Colonial Boston theme, all 5th grade classrooms decided to celebrate Valentine's Day with tea party. From the themed food to the decorations, the students enjoyed themselves. It was the perfect way to relax after our busy week of learning! Also, thank you to Karyn (Kate) and Kristen (Zach) for helping out, too.



Reading Buddies:
For the past few months, we've been working on a poetry project with our Reading Buddies. Today, we got to see the final product!! Students took a stanza from the poem, "Snowmen All Year" by Caralyn Buehner and together with their reading buddy and using the Pixie software, created a scene depicting their line. The buddy pairs memorized their lines and were filmed in front of the green screen reciting it. This project allowed us to integrate technology into our Literacy lessons as students modeled fluency and expression for their 2nd grade buddies. Students also used the visualizing strategy as they took a picture from their mind and created it for everyone to see. This project would not have been possible without our amazing and talented technology teacher, Ms. Benay. Thank you Benay for all that you do to make Medina a unique and special place to learn and grow.


Thank you for another great week of learning! Enjoy your Mid-Winter break, may the week off from school offer you and your family relaxation and rejuvenation.

Happy Friday,

~Mrs. Hatlestad

Upcoming Events:

01-March - Spelling Club begins

07 March - Final Heritage Book Due (We'll have more guidelines on this the week after break, stay tuned!)

15 March - No School

28 March - Heritage Project Cultural Fair Exhibit & Potluck (6:00pm-8:30pm)

25-30 March - Missoula Children's Theater

Auction Weekend - Pop! Goes Medina

A Week in Review

February 4 - 8

Dear Families in Room 210,

This week FLEW by, WOW! We were focused and worked hard all week and now only one more week until our Mid-winter Break!

Virtue Awards:
Gabi W. has earned a Virtues Award for showing EXCELLENCE and DILIGENCE in Social Studies. She went above and beyond the 1-paragraph direction to write a 5-paragraph description with excellent fluency and word choice.

Zach E. has earned a Virtues Award for showing RESPECT and KINDNESS. Zach is focused during instruction and works well his classmates. Thank you Zach for making Room 210 a wonderful place to learn.


Literacy:
We worked in our Journeys curriculum this week, using the realistic fiction story, Lunch Money by Andrew Clements. Students worked to use evidence from the text to infer the author's purpose. We concluded that with this particular text, the author was trying to get his readers to understand that writing comic strips is hard work.

Math:
Unit 4: Circles, Polygons, and Angles has come to an end! We worked this week on exploring line symmetry, rotational symmetry, circle graphs and estimating and measuring circumference. On Monday, students will take a practice test and STUDY, STUDY, STUDY for the end-of-unit assessment on Tuesday.



Science:
The UW was back in our classrooms this week as students finished up the assessment from Investigation 2. Students designed their own experiment using the previous investigation as a reference. We will analyze our work next week and discuss what makes an accurate investigation, a skill they'll need for our state test (the MSP) in May.

Social Studies:
Our Colonial Boston setting is up and on display in the 5th grade hall, along with the other 5th grade classes. Students analyzed their frieze and wrote descriptive words that came to mind. Using those descriptions, students wrote paragraphs about what it must have felt like to arrive, from England, in 1765.






Health:
We spilt into boys/girls classes this week as Mrs. Kaminoff and I took the girls and Mrs. Bethel/Ms. Keenan took the boys. Both classes were taught the same concepts, using the exact same materials (worksheets, SMARTboard slides, and videos). We studied the importance of good hygiene, the male and female reproductive systems, and pregnancy. We ended the week back in our own classroom learning about sexual exploitation.

Thank you for another great week! If you plan to be at the auction tomorrow night, I will see you there! A special thank you to Krystin Johnson (Audun) for coordinating our class auction project!

Have a wonderful weekend,

~Mrs. Hatlestad



Upcoming Events:

09-Feb - 2013 Medina Elementary PTA Auction - Pop! Goes Medina

13-Feb - Parent Information Night at Big Picture School, 7-8:30 p.m.

18-Feb - Mid-winter break begins

22-Feb - Mid-winter break ends

A Week in Review

January 28^th – February 1^st  

 

It’s February already?  Yup!  This week was quite productive for us 5^th graders; A new Math unit, Science Inquiry and conclusion writing, Social Studies Story Path Colonial setting and Reading Buddies with Miss Muller's class on Friday made this week fly by! 

 

 



Virtues Awards:
Sarah Z. and Lauren S. have earned a Virtues Award for showing the virtues of SERVICE and CLEANLINESS. Sarah and Lauren selflessly volunteered to clean an organize our Science materials after our Science Investigation! Their commitment to keeping our classroom clean, allows us to do our best learning. Thank you ladies!!
 

Writing:
Students wrote 5-paragraph essays this week! We worked together to brainstorm, organize, and write our essays. Students completed their rough drafts and revised independently. We reviewed the importance of transition words and created a "bank" of them (displayed on the wall) that students can refer to if they get stuck. I shared my own writing with students and modeled revising, making meaningful changes to my rough draft.

Math:
We started our new Math unit this week, Unit 4: Circles, Polygons, and Angles. This week, we reviewed concepts learned in 4th grade (i.e. line, ray, angle, vertex) and began using protractors to measure angles. We also used two known angles in a triangle to identify the third missing measurement. We ended the week classifying polygons.

 

Social Studies:
Students began working in cooperative groups designing and creating the "frieze" or "setting" for our Social Studies Unit, Story Path: The Struggle for Independence in Colonial Boston. We used what we learned from our reading to determine the important businesses that were vital to the community, as well as the geographic features of Colonial Boston at that time. The frieze will be on display in the 5th grade hallway, right along with the other 5th grade classrooms.

Science:
This week was full of Scientific exploration as we partnered again with the University of Washington for two investigations.  Students learned  that a solution is saturated when as much solid material as possible has dissolved in the liquid.  We worked together to form the conclusion that solubility is the property that substances have of dissolving in solvents. Solubility is different for different materials and can change with temperature and different solvents. Students wrote conclusions to demonstrate and share their knowledge.  The UW will be back next week, guiding students in designing their own investigation! 


Upcoming Events:
February 4^th – 8^th:  Human Growth Development classes (Monday, Wednesday & Thursday)
February 7^th – Heritage Writing – coming to America!
Saturday, February 9^th - Auction
18-Feb - Mid-Winter Break! (through Feb 24)