LAST WEEK OF 2014

Harriet Tubman DWA link for kids today:

http://safeshare.tv/w/DHBQsukNpw


Below you will see some pics of our fantastic Potlatch.  Pablo, our gust speaker, gave a lecture on the Peopling of Americas with artifacts, and he also had a storytelling/music presentation in the afternoon. Students are also doing a great job presenting on their own native American research and you will see some of those projects below too.

This week we have a few things to wrap up in each subject before we celebrate with our Winter Party this Friday.  Below is the focus for each subject this week.
Reading: Finish our read aloud and work on Book Shares
Writing: Nonfiction DWA about Harriet Tubman and word study work sheet
Math: Finish division of decimals; unit test on Thursday; midterm test on Friday
Social Studies: share NA presentations
Science: complete Winter holiday door decoration on Passenger Pigeons

DEC 8 - DEC 12 OUTLOOK

Families, below is our outlook for this week.  Some current highlights include success on our recent science experiment which will go home to view this week, student Native American projects to be displayed before the PTA meeting at 6:00 Tuesday evening, and overall students were more focused this week.

Students preparing "puddles" for our water experiment.

We color coded our notes to organize our writing.

Everyone meets Nola during dismissal! Shhhhh, she is sleeping!

MONDAY:
Reading: Inferences with JR books and science/ss articles
Writing: New word study routine and classroom spelling bees
Math: Intro to decimal multiplication and division
Social Studies: Native American presentations
Science: Passenger Pigeon Winter Door Dec

TUESDAY:
Reading: Inferences with JR books and science/ss articles
Writing: New word study routine
Math: Practice decimal multiplication and division
Social Studies: Native American presentations
Science: Passenger Pigeon Winter Door Dec
COME TO THE PTA MEETING TO SEE ALL 5TH GRADERS GREAT NATIVE AMERICAN WORK!!!

WEDNESDAY
Reading: Inferences with JR books and science/ss articles
Writing: New word study routine and classroom spelling bees
Math: Practice decimal multiplication and division
Social Studies: Native American presentations
Science: Passenger Pigeon Winter Door Dec

THURSDAY
Reading: Inferences with JR books and science/ss articles
Writing: New word study routine and classroom spelling bees
Math: Practice decimal multiplication and division
Social Studies: Native American presentations
Science: Passenger Pigeon Winter Door Dec

FRIDAY:
Math: Practice decimal multiplication and division
Social Studies: Native American presentations/POTLATCH CELEBRATION!!!
Science: Passenger Pigeon Winter Door Dec

THANKS AND 3 WEEKS

Families, all I have to do is review the images and notes on the blog and feel thankful for our class. We have had some fun learning so far this year and I am excited for the next 3 weeks before Winter Break.  I am very thankful for all you do to make Grant a better place.  There are two great opportunities to help out coming up - the Potlatch Celebration and the Winter Party.

Below is a week-long view of the learning this week.  For the Powwow project, presentations finished by Dec. 9 will be on display at the PTA meeting that evening.  I am also emailing each family with a follow up of our conference so look out for that too.

MONDAY:
Reading: review quality reading responses of Just Right books
Math: review 2 digit divisor division
Writing/SS: revision lessons to finish our Powwow projects
Science: water experience/observations

TUESDAY:
Reading: assessment of quality reading responses
Math: 2 digit divisor division test
Writing/SS: revision lessons to finish our Powwow projects
Science: plan water experiment

WEDNESDAY: 
Reading: review reading connections
Math: new unit: multiplying and dividing decimals lesson 1
Writing/SS: revision lessons to finish our Powwow projects
Science: water experiment data, science reading

THURSDAY
Reading: assessment of reading connections
Math: multiplying and dividing decimals lesson 2
Writing/SS: revision lessons to finish Powwow projects
Science: water experiment data, science reading

FRIDAY
Reading: making inferences
Math: multiplying and dividing decimals lesson 3
Writing/SS: revision lessons to finish Powwow projects
Science: water experiment data/graph/conclusion

GOOD WORK

Families, Friday was a productive and relaxing day in the Ecoschoolhouse.  Below are some pictures of scientists working on their Boat science experiment.  Whether traveling or relaxing at home, Thanksgiving Break could be a great opportunity to read or work on Book Shares or make progress on the Native American Museum Exhibit.  NA work completed by December 9th will be unveiled at the Grant School PTA meeting that night. 

On Monday, each student who turned their draft in received notes from me on how to revise and continue their NA writing in class.  Students are practicing double digit division today and tomorrow.  In reading, students are making connections to their Just Right books.  I look forward to getting back in the classroom after break and introducing a couple new solid routines.

UPDATE

Families, below is an update of our current learning and focus through Winter Break.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Social Studies:  Announcing the POTLATCH celebration on Dec 12!  Look in your Friday Folders to see how you can help out planning this event to celebrate our Native American learning.   Experts will be completing their NA museum exhibits next week and we will present our learning the following week.  The final week of social studies before winter break will be an introduction to the Age of Exploration.

Science:  Classroom scientists have produced our science focus for the year: How does litter affect the diversity of stream organisms?  Student interests also included ideas about transportation, sound, and design and we will work these ideas into our community project.  Right now and through December, we are focusing on 3 experiments to support our learning and research some topics connected to our focus.  This week we are constructing boats and researching why things float.  After Thanksgiving, we will have an experiment on properties of water and a third focusing on litter.  Students are practicing their application or experimental design.  As they plan these experiments in groups and then pairs, they are preparing to perform one experiment on their own as an assessment of experimental design.  This won't take place until after Winter Break.

Writing: All of our writing efforts are focused on completing and revising our drafts for our NA museum exhibits.  We are using specific lessons on nonfiction writing, especially organization, background knowledge, and nonfiction features to support our communication about our important NA topics.  After Thanksgiving, I will introduce a word study routine so students can also focus on spelling patterns.

Reading: All student chose a "just right" book this week and we looked at ways to continue picking just right books when we finish this one!  Our reading focus right now is about making connections to your book.  We also started our Book Share sharing routine today.  Each Friday, we will share some Book Shares with the class. I included a link below to help kids make good book choices.  We also downloaded the Overdrive App so students can check out eBooks from the DBRL public library.

Reading Link to quality literature at DBRL:

http://kids.dbrl.org/booklists/ 

Math: Our focus in math right bow is dividing by 2 digit divisors.  Students are working hard on dividing with larger numbers.  This unit will be assessed the Tuesday after Thanksgiving Break,  We will then focus on multiplying and dividing decimals until Winter Break. 

CATCHING UP! PARTY TIME!

Families, it is good to be back in the Ecoschoolhouse and getting in the swing of things.  Below I have outlined our focus for the week and I included some pics of our fantastic Halloween Party (thanks to all the adults who helped make this a success!). As a reminder, I will be out each Wednesday through 2014 and the week of Thanksgiving.  Mrs. Darah Oxford will be our guest teacher during all of my absences.  She is very reliable and knows our routine and learners well. 

Reading: We are focusing on Book Shares this week!  Students will spend reading time catching up on their Book Share work.  We expect each reader to have at least 3 of these creative book reports by the end of the trimester (this Friday!). 

Writing: Writers have completed a Nonfiction writing about a Native American region.  This week they are focusing on completing research for their Native American museum exhibit.  Students are also spending a few more moments making sure their I AM poem is completed in iMovie form.

Social Studies:  Students are using books and electronic resources to collect research on their Native American museum exhibit topic.  Mr. K and I will be revising dates for our Potlatch celebration and other important dates for this work.

Science: Scientists have all shared their inspirations from our community observations.  You can view their wordles on the CPBL page link to the right. This week we are sharing our ideas for our year long science experiment and community project.  We also will complete a science article about pumpkins.

Math: We will finalize our division with 1 digit divisors this week.  There will be a test on Friday.  Then we will continue looking at division with 2 digit divisors.

Please don't hesitate to call or email if you have any questions.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN:

This Week

Families, below is an overview of what learners are focusing on this week in each subject. 

Reading: Readers are continuing to read their Native American themed book club book. This week their literature journal focuses on setting.

Writing: Each student will complete their Native American region website and their I AM poem iMovie.

Math: Mathematicians are working on reviewing and applying division facts. I will grade the multiplication tests ASAP.

Science: Scientists will be reading articles about various science topics and writing about what they read. This type of research we will have to get used to when we decide our research topic for the year. We will also have a guest speaker on Flamingo Conservation and ecology of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

Social Studies: Students are choosing and researching a Native American topic they will become experts on.

And here is what the teacher is focusing on this week:

WELCOME NOLA ROSE NEWS

This is by far the most important update ever on the Ecoschoolhouse Examiner:  Please welcome Nola Rose Nies to the world!  She was born 10/16/14 at 10:37 am.  Nola was 8 lbs 2 oz and 20 3/4 inches long at birth.  Everyone is healthy and happy.  I feel truly blessed and I look forward to getting back to the classroom to share my news with everyone in person. 

EXAMPLES AND MODELS

Families, Grant All Stars are models of fine individuals with special talents.  Congratulations to the Blues Corps members who put on an amazing performance of poetry and music at the PTA meeting last night.   Kids wanted me to add an example of a character reading paragraph we discussed during reading today as a model for their literature journal.  Below is also an example of Native American region illustrations for our Native American region website work.

The main character in The Phantom Tollbooth is Milo.  This 10 year old boy is trying to rescue Rhyme and Reason to save The Lands Beyond.  Milo is polite, curious, and often confused.  For example, Milo was polite when he talked to King Azaz.  Furthermore, when Milo comes to a new place and meets new people he asks lots of questions.  Lastly, Milo seems confused because he does not understand how Dictionopolis works

By Avrill

.     

LEARNING UPDATE

Families, it is smooth sailing in the Ecoschoolhouse while I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new baby girl who will arrive any day now and the Cardinals are entering the NLCS.  Below you will see the focus and upcoming learning for each subject.

Reading: Students are in a book club centered around books with a Native American theme.  We are learning about story elements this week in our Literature Journal.  Each week during our book clubs we will have a week long assignment focused on a certain reading skill.  Our reading will also impact our social studies Powwow theme which focuses on Native American culture.  These books can be used for book share work too.

Social Studies:  Historians are learning about various Native American regions.  We are focusing on the landforms and resources natives used in their daily life.  After we learn about each region with a group poster, we will start to research a Native American topics to become experts on and create a museum exhibit for.

Here links to a few videos we watched to support the natural resource to capital resource idea:

BAMBOO HOMES OF BALI

A TASTE TO CORK

PLAINS NATIVES BUFFALO USES

Writing: In writing this week, we are finally completing our I AM poems.  Students have written descriptive phrases in a poetry format to describe their personalities.  Students who finished early are investigating with iMovie as they recite their poem into a movie format. This great work will be hanging up in the hallways soon.

Math: As I hope you have seen, we are focusing on multiplication during our math time.  As a class, we have studied properties of multiplication, the power of estimation and we are starting on using the algorithm with more challenging numbers.  Students have many opportunities to practice in class and we also have extension activities and math games for those who finish their practice early.

Science:  This week in science we are reflecting upon our community experiences.  Students are finishing their notes for the 3 places that inspired them the most.   I will grade these 3 notes and scientists are using them to create wordles to represent their ideas (example below).  We will use this reflection work to guide our year long experiments and community project.  You can try a wordle yourself here:  http://www.wordle.net/

Students have also continued observing in our gardens at school.  This week Avrill and Ysana found the dark white-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata) moth caterpillar below.  Finally, Mr. K and I won a grant to buy GoPro cameras and nature guide books to help inform our observations in the future.

 

 

  

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

This picture is of the Garden Ecosystem Display 5th grade made last year. Yesterday before the Travel Show many students helped update the QR codes an get it ready for the CCUA Harvest Hootennany at the Urban Farm tonight. There will be good food, music, and prizes.  Mrs. Nies and I will be there unless Junior makes other plans!

As for the Travel Show, thank you to all the All Star families, students, and staff that visited and supported our successful afternoon.  We worked right up to the last minute and kids should be proud of their fantastic work. I look forward to grading each island and enjoying their creative writing. Below is a panorama of our class during our celebration.

TRAVEL SHOW INVITE; CITIZEN SCIENTISTS

Families, I meant to send home an invitation to all for the Travel Show tomorrow.  The invitation is posted below.  Please come and see all our very creative geography and writing work.  You are welcome to come anytime between 12:30 and 3:00.

Yesterday in reading we continued our focus on summarizing.  Part of this required us to take a look at setting.  We also practiced located important information while reading articles about Monarch Butterflies.  This work was prompted by our amazing observation of a caterpillar turning into a chrysalis on the brck wall at Grant School!  Alas, the chrysalis was squished and did not survive.  We missed a great opportunity to view an incredible part of nature.  Anyhow, we memorialized "Chris" the monarch chrysalis with a poem and each student posted facts about monarchs for the whole school to learn.

Here is the chrysalis that formed right after lunch on Tuesday!

Here is the poem to help teach about "Chris" and a QR code to two videos we watched in class. 

Kids posing by there monarch facts!

In science, we have progressed through our bird feeder experiment.  Students are learning the expectations of science experiment work concerning data tables, graphs and conclusions.  This has also allowed us to incorporate many of our math skills. When Junior arrives (any day now!), the kids will work on small experiments in the classroom with the substitute.

In math, we have prepared for out math test today.  After this test, we will focus on multiplication of while numbers from 2 digit to 3 digit numbers.  This is a good time to practice some facts at home.

This Saturday is the CCUA Harvest Hootenanny.  This is a fun event for all, kids and adults with music, games and good food.   CCUA has helped our school with funding and materials for many of our science adventures.  Plus, our Garden Ecosystem display will be at the festival!  

Hope to see you tomorrow at the Travel Show.

IMPORTANT DATES UPDATE

Families, today's last field trip to the City Council building was very purposeful.  Students got advice on planning their islands from our Sustainability Director, Barbara Buffaloe, and we also learned a bit how city government works with a meeting with City Manager, Mike Matthes.  Students are spending the rest of the day working on their islands.  We also have a special performance today from the Music Makers, a relief foundation that supports musicians.  I have added some important dates to the right (including NO SCHOOL on Monday!) and the Travel Show next Friday.  See you all at the Grant School Blues Corps performance tomorrow at noon at Stephens Lake!

HAPPY ARTS N BLUES NIGHT!!! (followed by a long update)

The scene on the playground was festive!  What a great evening for Grant School!  I want to thank all the staff and family volunteers who organized this special event.  The kids have been practicing all week for their performance this weekend at the Roots n Blues BBQ festival.  Arts N Blues night helps support the fine arts at local schools and allows Ms. Sission to provide authentic arts experiences and learning opportunities for our All Stars.  Way to go, kids!  Way to go families!  Thanks TJ Wheeler!  We will see you this Saturday at Stephens Lake Park.

Our Blues Corps students also kept up with our academic load this week.  In reading, we practiced clarifying questions using short magazine articles supporting our community experience.  Articles included a piece on closing post offices, and forest firefighters.  Next week, we will have more time for reading our fiction books. 

For writing/ss, students primarily focused on drafting ideas for their Island Travel Brochure.  They used examples of past student brochures to help them brainstorm ideas.  Next week, we will create final copies of our Travel Brochures as we prepare to display our island work during the Travel Show next Friday afternoon, October 3.  At the Travel Show, we will also reveal our landform quilt from Art class with Ms. Christiansen.  Some students will also help edit websites from our Garden Ecosystem display so the display is ready to use at the annual CCUA Harvest Hootenanny. Students also addressed letters to our tour guides for all these field trips.  We are sending our helpers a thank you and an invitation to tour the Ecoschoolhouse!

During math, we practiced our large number and decimal subtraction and addition.  Most of our numbers and tasks during lessons came from measurements from our bird feeder science experiment or were related to our community experiences.  For example, we rounded times from the bus map and compared zip codes the day of the USPS trip.  We also had authentic task of subtracting decimals as we figured the weight of bird seed birds were eating out of our feeders. There will be a test over this unit next week.

Science this week consisted of four community field trips.  Photos of trips from this "Government Week" are on the CPBL link to the right.  This is our last week of trips!  We finish with time in the City Council room.  In one week, students have stood atop an ancient, immense limestone bluff and viewed historic limestone buildings downtown.  We viewed history of the city through art and relics.  Next week, we will finish our notes and reflect upon our observations.  We will also continue our bird feeder science experiment by looking at results, graphing and conclusions.

Part of my focus next week will also be settling into a classroom routine of all day focused classroom learning.  It will be great for our class to enjoy some more class learning time together as we close out a couple projects and look to the rest of the year.  I also will be preparing them for a substitute to take over as guest teacher for a time when my new baby daughter is born! 

SOLID COMMUNITY LEARNING

Today was a day of well integrated community learning.  We started our day practicing questioning and clarifying while reading a new Scholastic news article about forest firefighters. Next we practiced rounding decimals and subtracting decimals using information from the Columbia transit bus map. After lunch we observed resources at the Columbia fire department and learned about our local history at the Columbia bus station.  The bus station was built in 1910 from limestone blocks similar to the limestone cliffs we had class beneath last week. The students noticed many similarities of the bus station to the eco-schoolhouse such as reused materials, vaulted ceilings and a LEED Silver award (we have Gold!). Students may be drafting their paragraph about transportation for their island tonight. We even had a short lesson on matter as students learned about the triangle of fire and iron oxidation. Enjoy pictures below of our two classrooms from today:  

INSPIRATION!

Today was an impressive day of learning in the Ecoschoolhouse.  Students spent their morning observing Stewart Park with their preschool buddies.  The 5th graders assisted their young working friends with science tools to observe living and nonliving specimens in the park.  We celebrated our time viewing insects, plants, birds, and such with Chaco showing off his frisbee skills. 

After a walk back to the Ecoschoolhouse, we discussed the Commutative Property of Addition using decimals we recorded in the field yesterday observing stream organisms.  In the afternoon, students were very focused as they worked independently on their science notes from recent experiences.  We will use their notes to guide our discussion about our community science project for the year. 

I also met with every student today about reading and writing and on their island project. At the end of the day, we celebrated each student who made progress on their work habit goal for the week.  Every student was able to make a choice about how to end the day.  Most enjoyed free time on their new devices.  We discussed some appropriate use expectations and students had fun downloading a few fun apps to their device.  After all, we had been very professional and responsible with the iPads up so it was good to have the kiddos enjoy them in a personal way. 

Below you will see photos taken by students over the past 24 hours.  Students are organizing their scientific observations and questions of these expderiences.  After this time in the field, the kids did a wonderful job as focused learners in the afternoon today.  Enjoy!

This vulture shot was taken by an experienced student birder.

This prairie is burned in some Springs which helps promote native plants. We also observed a native plant rain garden this day.

We are seeing many more trees and rock on our walks.

This was the view of our classroom today!

This student appreciated the limestone landscape.

There is a lizard on the very edge of the cliff!

Jackson observed the tall tree on the left has a large nest.

I heard tales of a large caterpillar...

...and I'm so proud of this scientist for using their hand as a measurement landmark!  That's a big caterpillar!

This is a limestone cliff!

Scientists asked about plants growing in the cliff and we discussed the 3 types of rocks: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous.

Okay, these bones are still in my science bag.  We will have to have an identification contest!

Great shot.

Scientist at work.

We have seen these grasshoppers often, as well as a longer, spotted brown one.

And yet another organism to identify!

We helped our preschool buddies observe with science tools.

Our buddies were already categorizing living and nonliving things before observed some together in observation jars. I was very pleased with how well our 5th grade All-Stars were serious in their job of modeling scientist behavior.  This a very successful buddy trip to Stewart Park.