Families, I thoroughly enjoyed conferences and meeting with all of you. I fully appreciate all your efforts at home. Every week, I am more impressed with this classes' ability and performance. I am excited to see what class science project they choose for their 5th grade year.
Coming out of conferences, I want to share a couple curriculum developments. I have updated the Book Share link on this blog to include more information about the Book Share program. Everyone should have 3 by Thanksgiving, 4 or 5 by Winter Break. The Book Share page now has student resources, updated links to award winning book lists, and examples of recent book shares. I will continue to update.
Also, I will be sharing information about the math curriculum. I will be sending home all the math books for students to share with you. Also, expect family letters for each unit. Finally, I will be sharing how to access the math curriculum digitally. It might all end up a new link on the blog too.
This week included steady progress in all subjects. Below is a short description of our current work.
READING: Each reader focused on Book Share progress. Book Shares will be the focus next week too. They are looking great. After Thanksgiving Break, we will start new book clubs with weekly assignments until Winter Break. The theme of our next book club will be "journey" and include stories of characters on some type of journey. This theme mirrors our Social Studies work at that time which will be Explorers.
WRITING/SS: All time was spent developing drafts of our Native American museum exhibits. Students are all preparing poster board displays, models, presentations, and more. I hope to have our final exhibits ready by Nov. 30 to start presenting. Finalizing our projects will be our work until then.
MATH: Fractions is what it's all about. Fractions and how they relate to division. Fractions with number lines. Fractions operations with mental math. Our fraction progress is very smooth and kids are enjoying the work. We will assess this fraction unit around Dec 1.
SCIENCE: We really enjoyed our Beeclipse activity this week. Our MU science expert Ms. Emi trained us in listening to the bee buzzes on the data recovered the day of the eclipse. We practiced listening and discussed science words like amplitude, frequency/pitch, and duration. We also learned about bee biology and behavior too. We spent time sharing our science WORDLES as expression of our fall field experiences. This discussion will determine our science project for the year. I have spent time sharing past projects too.
