Monday, June 2, 2014

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

5-4 News

Hello 5-4 Parents,
It is hard to believe that we are into the last two weeks of school! As the temperatures rise, the fifth graders' attention spans seem to be diminishing. :)  However, they are really trying hard to stay focused and make the most of these last two weeks of learning.   Here are some important dates to remember:

5/30     Field Day (afternoon)
            May Book Reports Due
6/2       Yearbooks come home.
6/5       Last day of school!

Field Day:
For Field Day this Friday, please remember to send your child with a filled water bottle. Remind your child to wear clothing suitable for playing outdoor games, including gym shoes. You may also send in sunscreen for your child to apply before we head outside for the afternoon.

South Reading List:  

A note from the South language arts teachers is posted on Edmodo. It explains that each of our students should read Maniac Magee and The Running Dream this summer in preparation of the coming school year.

Reading:
The class is enjoying reading The Killing Sea during our shared reading time. Our main focuses during this time has been author's structure and author's craft.  We've also been working on vocabulary and comprehension skills.  During guided reading time, the groups are reading leveled online books about water-related topics as well. We have the chance to compare the structure of these informational texts to other informational texts we've read and to The Killing Sea.

Writing:
The class has been working hard to develop all of the skills necessary to write a short fiction piece. We've used picture books to examine the "shape of a story" and identify that all stories contain characters, setting, a conflict, rising action, a climax, and resolution.  We've been practicing developing believable characters through showing feelings, dialogue, strong verbs, and descriptions. They have written several pieces of a story, and will begin a rough draft of one of these stories this week. The plan is to publish and share the short fiction pieces next week.

Science:
Through experiments, discussion, and text, our class has been learning about water. We've explored percolation and aquifers, the scarcity of freshwater, water reclamation, and conservation.  The "Watery Earth" unit test will be this Thursday. The review is posted on Edmodo and will will work on and discuss the study guide tomorrow.

Have a wonderful week! Please contact me with any questions and concerns.

:) Kelly

Friday, May 16, 2014

Student Reflection 5/16/14


In science, we are learning about groundwater.  Through an experiment, we learned how water percolates through the porous layers of the ground and then is stored in an aquifer.


In math, we're working on a unit called Hands-On Equations. We are learning algebra concepts. This week, we started solving problems with two variables. Using the hands-on pieces has really helped us understand the concepts.

CRAZY HAIR DAY!!!

Friday, May 9, 2014

Student Reflection - 5/9/14










 
Some of the students in 5-4 shared their PSI presentations.  Some were electronic presentations like a Google presentation or a game show. Others were displays or [posters.

We had an awesome time at our last Dryden musical. Our absolute favorite part was seeing everyones' baby pictures.



World of Work was one of the coolest field trips we've had. We loved "working" in the different businesses. The delicious lunch afterward was a great bonus!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Yearbook Order Form

Yearbook orders are due May 16!  Find the form on Edmodo or let Mrs. O'Kelly know you need a paper copy.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Fifth Grade Slide Show

Thanks to Mrs. Lytle for her hard work on the fifth grade slide show!  I could recognize the sweet little baby faces of 5-4 right away. :)  View the slideshow here.


Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Fifth Grade Musical


The fifth grade musical is Wednesday, April 30th.  Please remind your child to wear dark pants and his/her Dryden fifth grade t-shirt to school tomorrow. For the evening performance, doors open at 6:30 and fifth graders need to be here by 6:45. The show will begin at 7:00.

See you there!

Friday, April 11, 2014

Student Reflection 4/11/14

 On Wednesday at our school assembly the talented acrobatic Chicago Boyz came to perform and teach us a life lesson about safety and how their company started out. They showed us some cool gymnastics tricks that could be dangerous for not just kids but teachers. Some of these tricks included backflips, front flips,  jump rope tricks, and many trampoline tricks. They picked volunteers to flip/jump/superman over.  










In social studies we are learning about the harsh westward expansion. We are in four groups or wagon trains and we get to pick a person to be  the Wagon Master. There are some obstacles that we have to over come. We have to pick supplies for are families but we have to be careful and not pick items that aren't useful for our wagons because we only can have 1,000 BWU's or pounds in our wagon. We are so excited to
"go to" Oregon!



Bloggers: Lexi and Ava.
With help from Alex and Audrey.

News From 5-4 4/11/14

Hello 5-4 Parents,

What a beautiful day! Tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful too. I hope you all get a chance to get outside and play around with your kids.  Despite the fact that spring is in the air and the fifth graders are excited to be outside, they are doing a great job of staying on task and doing some amazing learning in the classroom!  (Let's hope this behavior continues through April and May!)  These last two months of fifth grade are going to be packed with special events and excitement!

Dates to Remember:


4/16-  Visit to South
4/18-  No School
4/21-  In School Field Trip Robert Crown
4/24-  Math MAP test morning
4/25-  World of Work Field Trip
4/28-  Reading MAP test afternoon
4/30-  5th Grade Musical
5/30-  Field Day

Here's what is happening in the classroom:

Reading- During shared reading time, we have been reading the informational text Children of the Wild West by Russell Freedman.  This aligns nicely with our unit on westward expansion and gives the kids a glimpse into what life was really like for children as they traveled with their families in a wagon train. This book provides the opportunity for us to work on "close reading" as we reread passages and dig into the text to find answers to questions.  The students are becoming experts at finding and accurately quoting text evidence, but we are still working on including our interpretations of the text.

During guided reading time, the groups are reading leveled non-fiction books that go into depth about different aspects of westward expansion.  We are using iPads during guided reading to explore these books on Trueflix, a subscription of online informational text and media.  We work in guided reading to reinforce vocabulary, comprehension, and discussion skills.

The students are also partner reading historical fiction novels set in the time of westward expansion.  They worked with a partner to map out a schedule for reading their books. Each day, the students meet with their partner, while not meeting with me in guided reading group, to share signposts they found while reading and add to the Google doc they created to document signposts.

Social Studies- Although our History Alive chapter 16 test was today, our adventure in westward expansion has just begun. The students have assumed pioneer identities, formed wagon trains, and loaded their wagons with supplies. Be sure to ask your child about the successes, struggles, and obstacles his/her wagon train is facing in the next few weeks. Will everyone survive the long trip west to more land, riches, and a better life?  Will the wagon masters be able to successfully lead their train?

As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns!

:) Kelly


Friday, March 14, 2014

Student Reflection- 3/14/14





This week, we started our PSI research. We took time to write our open questions about a topic we are interested in. We each created our own website to record our notes and reflect on our research process.


WE learned that our government has three branches. Ask your child how using three pencils to lift up a book a helped us understand the three branches.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Student Reflection 3/7/14

 After researching the human body systems in groups,we all voted on the most and least important systems in the body. The whole 5th grade got together to have a human body tiki torch ceremony, Survivor style. After a long discussion we all agreed that you could not live without all of your systems.







Here the Nervous System poses for a victory picture after they has won a great victory. The Skeletal System sadly got voted the least important system.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

ISAT Testing

Hello 5-4 Parents,

Next week we will begin ISAT testing. Please help your child to get enough rest and to eat a healthy breakfast, snack, and lunch in preparation for the tests.  Our class' testing schedule is as follows:

Monday      3/3     Reading 2:00
Tuesday      3/4     Math 9:15  and Reading 2:00  
Wednesday 3/5     Math 9:15
Thursday     3/6    Math 9:15

Tuesday       3/11   Reading 2:00

If you have any questions, please let me know!

Sincerely,
Kelly

Friday, February 21, 2014

Student Reflection 2/21/14

Jamie, Kaley, and Ava played instruments for the whole class. Kaley played the trumpet for us. Jamie played the trombone and Ava played the violin. Its was a very cool experience for our class to hear them play.

We also did an experiment in science about our heart rate. We predicted which exercises we thought would increase our heart rate the most and then tested them out. Wow! Those jumping jacks and burpees really got our hearts going.

We also made bone burritos. We used jelly for bone marrow, lady fingers as the spongy bone, Oreo cookies as compact bone, and a tortilla as thin membrane. It was a fun, tasty experiment that we learned a lot from.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Valentine's Day! 2/14/14

Thanks to Mrs. Giannopoulos for planning and throwing a super-fun Valentine's Day celebration for 5-4.  We're so thankful to have her as our room mom!  The fifth graders really tapped into their creative juices to write some hysterical stories using as many conversation hearts as they could incorporate. They used Air Server to share the stories they created on Google docs. The end result was a lot of laughs and smiles!




Sunday, February 9, 2014

News From 5-4 2/9/14



News From 5-4
February 9, 2014

Our classroom is buzzing with excitement about the class set of iPads we have the whole month of February. Our favorite discovery so far is using Air Server. Whenever the students want to quickly share a strategy or an idea, they can project right to the white board. This has proven helpful in sharing math strategies, writing prompts, and presentations like "Explain Everything." 

We will be having our Valentine's Day party on Friday from 2:45 until the end of the day. We will exchange valentines on Friday. Please don't worry about creating a container for the valentines, as we will take care of this at school. Here is a list of student names for your child as he/she is creating the cards: Kaitlyn, Alex C., Ava, Jamie, Lexi, Jack, Jade, Alex G., Ben, Max, Audrey, Logan, Ajla, Rick, Miranda, Eric, Michael, Jake, Kaley, Ryan, Mia, Lukas, Nick.

Dates to remember:
2/11-  100th Day of School
2/14- Valentine's Day Party 2:45
2/17- No School Presidents' Day
2/19- Student Variety Show Rehearsal in gym 4:00
2/20- Student Variety Show Dress Rehearsal in gym 4:00
2/21- Career Dress Day
         Variety Show 6:30 in commons

Here's what's happening in 5-4:

Literacy:
We have finished another novel in guided reading groups. The end of book tests came home in the Friday Folder this past week. The students will also be assessed on their daily work in their literature logs including signposts, words worth noting, figurative language, comparing characters and events in literature, and identifying problems and solutions.

During shared reading time we have been reading informational texts related to our science unit, The Human Body. While reading The Human Machine, we focused on identifying the internal structure of the text. Identifying the structure not only helped the students decide how to best structure their notes, but also strengthened their comprehension of the material. While reading Bones and Muscles and Respiration and Circulation, we will focus on choosing and defining words worth noticing. We will be reading and taking notes with a text dependent question in mind. The students will be asked to explain the relationship between the respiratory system and the circulatory system, using text evidence and their interpretations of the text to support a claim this week.

Math:
During Unit 7 we have been exploring exponents and negative numbers. We've worked on understanding exponential notation, powers of 10, scientific notation, parentheses, and order of operations. This week we will work on ordering and comparing negative numbers, adding and subtracting negative numbers, and continue practice with line graphs and line plots. Our Unit 7 test will be the week of February 18. Unit 8 will dig deeper into fractions and ratios.

Science:
The fifth graders have been enjoying our Human Body Unit. Through experiments and models we've discovered how the body moves and what systems work together to make that happen. We've determined the importance of the nervous system in movement and explored voluntary and involuntary movement. Seeing our reflexes in action and comparing that to our ruler grabbing experiment last week, helped us to determine how the body works differently to move in different situations.

Our class created a Human Body Wonder Wall where we can post any questions we have as we are studying the human body and its related systems. These questions have evolved into a mini-research project where the students are researching, documenting, reflecting, and commenting on peers' documentation. It is exciting for me to see how many of them have changed their questions as they've dug deeper into a topic and how their peers' feedback has moved them forward in their thinking.

We've split into small groups to research the different systems in the body. Groups are using Google Docs to record facts that help them to answer the two essential questions: How does this system work? Why is this system important to the body? They will be creating Explain Everything presentations to incorporate videos, photos, diagrams, and text to convince the rest of the class of the importance of their system. We will share these presentations with the entire fifth grade.

As always, please feel free to email or call me with any questions and concerns!

Sincerely,
Kelly

Friday, February 7, 2014

Student Reflection 2/7/14

This week we became experts on Air Server. This is Jake sharing his WEX entry. He was able to project it right from his iPad. This has come in handy while we are showing how we solve math problems too!  We can't wait to explore all the ways we can use Air Server. Having the class set of iPads this month is awesome.

During science, we explored how our nervous system helps us to react to things. During this experiment, we dropped a ruler and asked our partner to catch it. They used their sensory organs to sent a message to the brain. The brain thought about it and then sent a message through the nerves to the hand muscles. The muscles contracted to pull on the bones so we could grab the rulers.


Other times, your nervous system has reflexes. Two examples we saw were the reflex of our pupils in reaction to light (see video of Kaitlyn) and the blink reflex. Did you know that we have reflexes to protect our body?




Friday, January 31, 2014

Student Reflection- 1/31/14

As part of a "Mini PSI" unit, we spent time today exploring a subject that we want to learn more about within the human body. After researching and narrowing down our topics, we took time to write higher order thinking questions, using the information we learned earlier this week about Bloom's Taxonomy. By sticking to the higher end of the taxonomy, we are sure to have open, researchable questions. We posted our questions on Edmodo. The next step, is to constructively comment on our peers' questions.









Ben is an elbow! Rick and Ryan are antagonistic, skeletal muscles. We learned this week that bones and muscles work together to make the body move. Did you know that muscles can only pull...never push.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Student Reflection 1/17/14

While we were studying the human body, we created questions for our wonder wall. We evaluated the questions to see if they were open or closed. Then we revised our questions to make them all open. Next week we will classify our questions according to Bloom's Taxonomy.








This week we paired up with our buddy class, Mrs. Shellinger's kindergarteners, to teach them about the Dryden Dos. We wrote scenarios to help the little kids learn how to behave at Dryden. It felt good to help them.


Bloggers- Rick & Miranda