Picture Day!

We have our picture day on Wednesday, October 7th at 9:30!

Working soooo hard.

I am sure your 5th graders expressed their stress last week while we were learning how to make meaningful revisions to our research. Editing also took us two days. I am incredibly proud of their stamina and perserverence. They learned so much, but here are the main points.
Research has to be accurate and we need to understand the research we choose to use so we can explain it. Our research needs to be organized, just like our "writing" papers. Spelling and grammar count, and fragments are easy to write- but hard to fix if we cannot remember our original intent. Transitions are a necessary tool to help with our fluency and our comprehension. We will continue to work on these instruction points throughout our year. We are already better writers and are becoming more independent in the very important steps of revising and editing.
We also learned how to use our models to enhance our content, but that content and the written componant are the most important part of our projects.
Presenting was hard first go around. We learned what 5th grade expectations are and ways to help us present our content in the most effective ways.
It was a great week. Projects took priority to all other subjects, and since projects fine tunes our reading skills, writing skills and speaking and listening skills, I was happy to let them work longer.

They will be receiving their last Darth Tater piece on Monday! Shhhh, don't tell them.

I hope they are all having restful and playful weekends. They deserve it!

Time with our 2nd grade buddies!

Reading with our friends as part of 2nd grade ' s reward. How cool they pick us as a reward.

September 20, 2015

I hope you all have had a beautiful weekend, we have been working extremely hard and your children really deserve a break!
Projects: We are wrapping up our Nevada project this week. We have found it extremely difficult to research, put into our own words, and then create paragraphs that we can connect by transitions so that we will end up with an essay. I feel really good about the way they are learning how to put these steps all together and am proud of them for their efforts. I know they are stressed, but I promised them that writing will become a little easier as they become more proficient writers.
Writing: We will be starting a narrative this week. We have been preparing for our first writing and I am really looking forward to their work and conferencing with them. They are excited to begin writing!
Reading: We are finishing up our group book clubs on Tuesday.  We are in the process of rewriting our summaries. We defined summary and discussed the components we needed to have to make sure that we were as detailed as possible. We will start reading Stuart Little by Wednesday at the latest.

Darth Tater just needs his cape!! 👏👏👏
Our transitions are incredible, we have been so responsible with our work, and have had minimal students in study hall! We have been kind and patient with each other and are working better together every day!

5th Grade rocks!,

September 13, 2015

I hope you all enjoyed your busy weekends with your families.

Projects: Last week was a very good week.  I spent a little time reflecting on a few things that I realized last week. The first is that my 5th graders don't have as much "research" stamina as I had expected. I will be adjusting our time so they can work up to longer stamina at a little slower pace. We should be finishing up this project in the next two weeks and I am really confident that their research is strong and their paragraphs will be well put together.

Writing: We are working on some of our language standards to set the base for building strength in our writing traits.  We are improving daily and I am excited to see them take their writing more serious across the curriculum. They are beginning to understand how their writing instruction applies to their writing throughout the day and not just during writing block.

Reading: We are finishing up our books this week. We are also rewriting our summaries this week as well. It is important to make sure that our writing is strong and reflects our knowledge of what we read and reflects our understanding.

We are well on our way to putting Darth Tater together! I am really pleased with our transitions and our abilities to use our time well and be productive! 

Working hard!

This week we will be very busy in our short three days.

Reading: we will finish up our first book clubs and rewrite our summaries making sure we have complete sentences, evidence based terms, and strong word choice. We should be done by Thursday and ready to move to new literature on Monday.

Writing: We will continue to work hard to connect to ideas and prompts quickly. We will work in ixl language for the first time (don't worry, not for homework, just for reinforcement during classtime), and we will also be writing a new ending to a story your students will listen to. We will review similes and metaphors, and take our first assessment.

Projects: I am really pleased with the research the students have compiled this first project! This week we will be finishing up taking notes and begin to write our individual paragraphs.  We have two groups who have chosen to create a model, those students will come home this week (end of the week) with a short list of supplies they need. I have collected a lot of "stuff" so hopefully they will use what I have!

I hope you enjoyed the extra day with your children. Darth Tater is slowly gaining parts and I am excited to see him continue to come together! I hope you enjoy the pics of our class. I love to post our daily happenings! 

Fifth graders!

Helping our second grade friends makes us very happy! Kind hearted children who I get to spend my days with!

Fourth graders!

Busy little people learning how to edit, on task and fully engaged! 💙