Spring Concert Practice Links

Hello!

The following links will bring you to the videos that students need to be practicing for the spring concert coming up on May 23rd.

"Hey Brother" by Avicii 


Cups by Kidz Bop


How to do the cup moves 

Simile and Metaphor Link!

Check out this book that was read by someone and posted on YouTube!

Skin Like Milk, Hair of Silk by Brian Cleary 

Natural Disasters

The students have spoken, and we are on our final ELA unit of the year.  They had the choice between learning about the rainforest or natural disasters, and well, they chose to learn about natural disasters! 

This entails the following: 

Students are learning about hurricanes and earthquakes more in-depth, as well as learning critical reading skills along the way.  They are learning how to paraphrase informational texts, learning the academic and scientific vocabulary along the way, learning how to understand the structure within informational texts (like cause/effect), they are writing a research report on a natural disaster, and we are tying science into this as well!  Part of science is that students need to understand the different systems in the Earth and how they work together, what a more perfect way to learn these systems!

Author Celebration!!

On Friday, April 21st, 2017, our class held our first Author Celebration!  Students were able to choose which writing piece that they wanted to read to an audience.  Students have actually written three different narratives over the past several weeks, and we felt that it was necessary to close our chapter on narrative writing by celebrating! The look on every child's face was priceless when their writing was applauded by their classmates, a local Veteran, the Principal, another teacher, some family members, and myself.  Students and guests were able to enjoy some healthy treats during this celebration.

If you would like a picture of your child reading their writing, please email me! I have pictures of every child there.

Play-Dough Recipe

Homemade Play-Dough Recipe

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 3 tsp. of white vinegar
• 1 tbsp of olive oil
• Food Coloring - use if you want too. 

1. Combine the oil, salt, flour, vinegar, and food coloring in a pan on the stove.  
2. Heat and stir constantly until it reaches play-dough consistency and is all clumped together. 
3. I found that I had to add some more olive oil to make it not sticky. 
4. Put it on parchment paper to cool down, and squish together to make sure that it is malleable. 

Performance Tasks

I can remember when I asked students at the beginning of the year what they were interested in, and they told me that they were interested in the mill and logging.  With that knowledge in my brain, I found the perfect opportunity to tie together their interest with a Performance Task and Unit!  For the past few weeks, we have been learning about writing stories.  We have been learning about point of view, characters, theme, plot, etc.  We have written our first narrative, learned how to implement dialogue, flash drafted a second narrative, and have actually written a third.  The third and final narrative was part of a Performance Task.  This task was simple.  Pretend that you are a person from back in time relating to Berlin History, logging, etc, and write your story.  Students could blog, write a narrative, write an interview, create props, video tape, tape record, etc.

For the past few days, students have been working on these stories.  They have revised, edited, and created a performance to be carried out on Thursday and Monday.  They were told to use historically correct information and to be creative.  The have done just that.  Their excitement is unbelievable and the hard work they have put in is amazing.  Tomorrow we start the performances, and I cannot wait to see their hard work!

Math Rockstars!

Ready for 5th Grade Math!!!

The final fourth grade unit that students needed to complete before being introduced to 5th grade math was Decimal Fractions.  This unit introduced students to the concept of hundredths, tenths, decimals, adding decimals, changing decimal and fractions back and forth, expanded form for fractions and decimals, place value, etc.  The students totally rocked this unit!  We started it on February 9th and we ended it on February 24th.  The students feel comfortable with decimals and how they relate to fractions now, and their data is so impressive!  We all feel so much more confident and ready to start the first 5th grade unit:  Place Value and Decimal Fractions. 

This week we are tackling Topic A, which teaches students about exponents, thousandths, and the place value system all the way to millions!  I feel confident that students will succeed in this unit.  Since we are completing 2 lessons a day, this unit should not take too long, which is great news for us.  

However, I do not want to ignore the knowledge that students have learned this year despite being in 4th grade math.  Students can add and subtract fractions, mixed numbers, and more.  This is huge since they did barely even know what fractions were before.  They also can multiply multi-digit numbers, they can divide using long division, they understand decimals, and more.  These are all vital skills that needed to be taught, and students have worked so hard on learning these concepts.  I know that I am proud of them, and they are proud of themselves too! 

So, let's celebrate what they know and tackle the new concepts with grit, perseverance, and positivity! Go 5th Grade! 

Theme

Theme

Right now our 5th grade readers are learning about theme and how to determine the theme of a story.  Students are now being asked to not only think of the theme, but they are to also use evidence in defending the theme they chose. 

We have reviewed that theme is the message that an author has in their story and is trying to tell the reader.  We know that we have to infer the theme, and the best way to do that is to use our inference equation, which is Background Knowledge + Text Clues = Inference.  We also know that there may be more than one theme in a story, and that it is open to logical interpretation, which makes theme a little complicated! 

We have read Teammates  and The Lotus Seed to practice finding theme, and we are now about to read books that we have already read in class to practice some more.  This theme work ties right in with our writing, since we are also teaching our readers a theme in our personal narratives!  

Here is a picture of our class paragraph that we created together when choosing a theme regarding the story Teammates.

Point of View and Perspective

In our core ELA class, we have been learning a lot about point of view, and how the narrator and their perspective affects the story.  By doing this, we read the book, Voices.  This book takes one event, a simple day at the park, and tells it from four different "voices."  The voices are from a "snobby" rich woman, from a poor, jobless man, from the rich child who just wants to have fun, and the poor child who does not really care. It is a beautiful book and it led to a lot of discussion from students about the characters, their perspectives, their lives, and more.

We are going to be reading an all time classic this week (Cinderella) and then reading the story from the step-mother's perspective as well.  Learning point of view and perspective is very important for the upcoming project that we will be doing!

We are also learning different ways to read to someone, such as the strategy, "I Read, You Read" and Choral Reading.  I am hoping that we can build our stamina on this and offer it as a option during Guided Reading time.

For our word study, we have combined forces with the 4th grade.  We are working together to work on spelling patterns.  After this week, we are going to be back to 5th grade to work on Greek and Latin Root words, and then after 1-2 weeks, we will be back to spelling patterns!  We are going to continue this rotating schedule (spelling, root words, spelling, root words) to help students get the spelling that they need, but also the vocabulary that they need as well.

Now, for writing, we are about to move onto the second bend in our unit, which is all about the writing process.  Students will be creating their first written narrative that is ready for publishing over the next few days, and I am SO excited for them to do this! Shortly after that, they will then do another narrative.  The more writing students do, the better they will become at it.

Multiplication

Well! It is official! Your student can officially multiply 4 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers.  In other words, if I tell a student to multiply 4,357 by 5, they can do it!  I know that students were worried about learning this skill, but when I taught them the two methods that we learned this past week, they grasped the skill  quite quickly and rocked it! Below is a more in-depth look at the two methods I taught this last week.

Please remember, we are only multiplying by single digit numbers so far!

The Partial Products Method: 

The partial products method is a building block to understanding the standard algorithm (or the way we learned how to multiply).  Say, for example, I have the problem 475 X 3.  I would think of it as 3 X 5 = 15, 3 X 70 = 210, and 3 X 400 = 1,200.  Now, I need to add those up, so the answer would be 1,425.

A lot of students love this method, however, it is not always the most efficient way to multiply, so we also learned standard algorithm.


The Standard Algorithm:

Now, this may not be fully the way that you and I learned to multiply, but it is VERY close.  Let's use the same numbers, 475 X 3.  Students would look at this problem and go through the following though process:  3 X 5 is 15, so I put 5 down in ones place.  Now, I have 3 X 7, but plus 1 (from that 15), so I have 22.  So, I put the 2 down in the tens place.  Now, I have 3 X 4, but plus 2 (from that 22), and so I have 14, so I write that down.  This means my total number is 1,425.

Here is a video, but please remember that students are not writing the "carry" numbers above, they are writing the "carry" numbers on the answer line.

Math Video


It is very important that students memorize their multiplication facts.  I do know that they sell math flash cards at Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and at other stores.  I have found that students know the concept of multiplication, but what is holding them back is the actual knowledge of their facts.  Please keep working with your students on these.