Christmas Movie, Revolutionary War Project

For our Christmas party, the fifth grades will walk on Tuesday Dec. 16 to Fallon Theater to see Penguins of Madagascar. This movie is rated PG. Watch for a permission slip to come home soon. The price is $6.00 for admission, small drink, and small popcorn. The 7th and 8th graders are going on a different day that same week. Because we are doing this for our party, no food will be needed on that last day before Christmas break. We will do an activity in the classroom that afternoon, but our big celebration will be the movie.

In academic news, we are learning all about the events of the Revolutionary War. On Wednesday, your student will select a person to research and learn about for the wax museum. Your child will need a costume, so you may want to discuss that. Students may choose either gender for their historical figure, the only expectation is that students are respectful in how he or she represents the person from history. Our final presentations will be on Monday, Dec. 15. More information to follow on the location.

Have a great week!

New Project

Today was the start of a new history project.  We will cover the years of 1607 - 1776 in just 5 weeks!  We will focus on events leading up to the Revolutionary war.  The presentation will be a Wax Museum, where each student will choose an important person to research and share a memorized speech as that person from history.  We kicked it off by reading a timeline of early United States history and an article about colonization.  Then we made Thanksgiving Bracelets that went with a poem about the Mayflower and Plymouth colony.  Then we made one of three types of colonial hats, either a colonial bonnet, a powdered wig, or a tri-cornered hat.  Because the students will dress up for their presentation, this activity seemed both appropriate and a fun way to get interested in the people of the Revolution.

In addition to this entry event, we started expository writing today.  We will shift gears with our writing to write to give information.  We will focus on organizing our writing with topic sentences and facts, rather than description and dialogue like we included in narratives.

Have a great week!

Project Building Days, Gratitude Journal Challenge

This week has been much anticipated by the students, it is the week we build during project time!  Thank you for helping your student get the supplies into the classroom.  The creativity level in the classroom is very high and I especially appreciate how they are using their research to confirm what they are making.  They are focusing on building things that represent Native American life, according to their research on their chosen tribe.  They are also learning about when the Europeans came into their region and what that was like.   Lots of learning going on.

We are working on writing skills in the classroom this week, focusing on eliminating run-on sentences and sentence fragments.  The students will get to apply these skills when they choose aone of their narratives to revise and publish.  We are also starting to write in Gratitude Journals.  If you would like to take this gratitude challenge by fulfilling the same assignment as your child, you can choose one person or thing you are thankful for each school day and write a paragraph (5 sentence minimum) about why you are thankful for this person or thing.  We will do this for the 11 school days before Thanksgiving.  It will be a challenge for all of us to complete this, but we are going to do our best.  We hope to use writing to define and express our thoughts, as well as focus on the positive things in our lives.  Please let me know if you do this, even if you miss some days!  What a great way to prepare for Thanksgiving and have meaningful discussions with your child.

Have a great week!

Halloween Party

It has been a pleasure to meet with so many of you for Parent Teacher conferences.  I appreciate the hard work your children are doing in the classroom.  It makes our classroom a great place to be.  I enjoy each day with them.

This week we have a few new things, we started a new project today about Native Americans and the European explorers.  This will be a shorter one, just three weeks, with a building component, so be prepared for the supply lists to come home on Wednesday of this week.  We also got new classroom jobs.  Ask your child if he or she applied for a job this quarter.  If they have not, it is not too late.  Get those applications in!

On Thursday, we will celebrate Halloween.  Please have your child wear his or her costume.  Make sure it follows the school guidelines for costumes.  Our class is having a nacho party at 1:30, with a Halloween game inside.  We will have drama at 2:30 - 3:15, then we will finish the day with pumpkin bowling outside from 3:15 - 4:00 when we dismiss.  Ask your child if you have a food assignment.  Those went home last Thursday.  Thanks for all you do!

Parent Teacher Conferences and Tuck Project

Parent teacher conferences are this Friday, 10/24, and next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I sent an email with specific times.  Please let me know when is the best time for us to meet.  Your student may come to the conference of you may come without him or her.  

This week in Reading, we are working on a Tuck Everlasting project in class.  Your student will need to gather 10 items from home that represent a character.  The items will come home after your child presents and should fit in a lunch bag.  Your student has chosen the character and is doing the writing in class.  

We have finished up auctions for the first quarter.  Thank you to all who sent in such great items!  It was a lot of fun to watch the students manage their money and make decisions about how much to spend on something.  Such great lessons for life outside the classroom!  

Have a great week!

End of Quarter Auctions

This is a big week in fifth grade.  We are ending the quarter, but we are also finishing up some major things in the classroom.  We finished our read aloud Wonder on Thursday.  We will finish Tuck Everlasting this week.  With both of these books, we will be discussing themes and how characters change during the course of the book.  These are two of my favorite books, both of them have great opportunities for discussion.  I highly recommend them, even to parents!

This week is our auction week.  Thank you to the parents who have already brought in auction items, Mrs. Wadsworth, Mrs. Baldwin, Mrs. Sorensen, and Mrs. Swan.  We will do auctions every day this week, so it's not too late to send in a treat or two.  I really appreciate it!

The Parent teacher conference schedule will be available soon!  I will hold some conferences on a Friday and some the following week, so I can accommodate everyone's schedules.  I am looking forward to meeting with everyone.  I will email you when the schedule is available for signing up.

Junior Acheivement, Bio Narrative, PE volunteer needed

In our economics project, we have been working with Washington Federal Bank to have the Junior Achievement program brought into our classroom.  This is a nationwide curriculum for 4th and 5th graders about economics.  They have trained presenters who have excellent materials that they share with us each week.  We played a game today with them, learning about different types of resources. It has been really helpful to learn with them and we appreciate having this program in our classroom.

This week, we are working on a biographical narrative in writing. We organized our narrative today and we will have it completed by Thursday.  Ask your child who they are writing about and why.

We have a wonderful Oasis PE parent, who is actually not a parent of any of our students, who takes our class each week Wednesdays from 3:15 - 4:00.  This person is not able to come for PE on Wed. 10/15 and Wed. 11/5.  If you can sub, please email me!  The students look forward to this all week.  It is a great way to enjoy this nice weather and play.  Can you help us out?  Let me know!