WE DID IT!!!

The Travel Show this week was a success!!  All of our geographers had very creative, well planned projects.  Thanks to everyone who made it.  What a great way to kick off the week.  Other special events this week included a field experience at Stewart Park, a fire week assembly, a visit from the Columbia Police Department color guard, and an extra recess for homework completion!

Please check the Friday Folder for important notices - it's pretty full this week!  Look for the Grandparent's Day Invitation for next Friday, October 14.  Also, there is a letter about our Capen Park field experience next Thursday, October 13.  Finally, there will be a multiplication math test on Tuesday so look out for the Monday night study guide.  Below is the general outline for each subject and a picture of the Color Guard presentation with a few photos students took with their ipads at Stewart Park.

READING: We focused on personal connections this week.  Next week the focus will be on book share progress before we start our Native American book clubs the following week.

WRITING:  Students completed their I AM poems this week.  We may share this work at Grandparents Day as a mini writing celebration.   Students are also working on a mini writing project for science, getting ready to share their inspirations from our field experiences.

MATH:  MULTIPLICATION TEST ON TUESDAY!!!  Our mathemagicians are ready to demonstrate their best work with their multiplication skills.  The following unit will be on division. I've noticed many students may benefit from fact practice at home or in the car or anywhere really. I've been very impressed with the efficient strategies students are using.

SCIENCE:  We are beginning to reflect on our field experiences and toward the end of October we will have chosen a 5th grade community science project based on our work so far.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  Next week we will begin our learning about Native American culture.  Students will be using various resources for research to become experts on a region and develop a small presentation to teach others.

WE DID IT (almost!)

What a wonderful week of great work and celebration!  Students worked extremely hard at their travel brochures, getting ready for the Travel Show on Monday.  We finished the week feeling accomplished - after a few tweaks tomorrow morning in Media, we will print and be ready for the Travel Show at 11:00!  Come see our islands before or after lunch. Students are welcome to bring island

We also celebrated Arts n Blues week with our special musician guest, TJ Wheeler.  I enjoyed watching the Grant School Blues Corps perform at the Roots n Blues Music Festival.  Great job, kids!  Grant School is a community full of creative talents.

Speaking of Grant School talent, I was very impressed with our MAP Scores and you may have read about Grant's success in the newspaper.  Specifically, the students in our class were very successful and that is encouraging as we plan for the year.  In 5th grade, we do our best to support creative, high quality projects from our learners and you will see that with the island project tomorrow.  The students are also creating impressive math posters applying their skills to multi-step word problems.  Below is the focus for the upcoming weeks in each subject.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  After finishing our geography unit with the Travel Show, we will spend a bit of time reflecting on our work and then getting ready to start our next thematic unit, Powwow, focusing on Native American culture.  A packet describing our work in this theme will be sent home in an upcoming Friday Folder.

READING: I have completed beginning of the year reading assessments with the whole class.  The time spent listening to readers and having them talk and write about their reading has given me a chance to know more about each reader.  We have practiced asking and answering questions and making personal connections.  Students will complete a personal connection table this week and we will also take the monthly STAR computerized math assessment.  I will be sending home results of this test with information about book choices for book shares in an upcoming Friday Folder.  When the Powwow theme begins, all students will be in book clubs, reading award winning novels with Native American backgrounds.

WRITING:  The Travel Brochure and other island writing took up most of our writing time of late.  In making the brochure, students got first hand experience using nonfiction writing features on the computer.  During the Powwow theme, students will focus on using nonfiction features to make a museum exhibit about Native American culture.  IN between the Travel Show and beginning Powwow, we will take time to finish our I AM poems, which are turning out great! 

MATH: Students are deep into practicing multiplication.  We are practicing 2 by 2 digit and this week 3 by 2 digit multiplication.  We practice using estimates to check our work and our class discussions are covering many mental math strategies and multiplication properties.  Everyone created a math poster last week using ratios and multiplication to answer word problems.  I'll post some here this week.  These posters we will continue to make to improve our math communication and problem solving of multi step problems.

SCIENCE:  After the Travel Show, we will spend more focus on science this week.  There will finally be our observation of Stewart Park.  We are planning one more field trip this fall to Capen Park for our last community field experience.  I will let you know the date as soon as possible.  Students will start gathering their observations and making word posters reflecting their most inspirational observations.  We will use these posters to decide on our year long community science project.

HARD WORKERS

Classroom C All Stars worked hard this week.  They completed a reading assessment, a math test, and formulated ideas for their island writing.  We also enjoyed a field experience yesterday. I am sending home graded work, such as math tests and Gazetteers in the Friday Folder.  Please send the folder work back on Monday.  Below is a snapshot for next week - only 4 days and a reminder:

BLUES IN THE SCHOOLS WEEK IS HERE!

Blues in the Schools at Grant info

Friday, 9/23

Bring $1 to buy your commemorative blues button on playground before school

Tj Wheeler arrives

10 Years of Blues in the Schools at Grant Art Exhibit at Central Bank of Boone County, 720 East Broadway, 5:30 to 6:30PM

Tuesday, 9/27

Bring $1 to buy your commemorative blues button on the playground before school

Thursday, 9/29

Arts & Blues Night at Grant, 5:30 to 7:30PM

Friday, 9/30

Music Makers Blues Revue returns to Grant for an assembly, 2:15PM

Saturday, 10/1

Grant Blues Corps performs at the Blues in the Schools stage, Roots N Blues N BBQ Fest, Stephens Amphitheater, 12:00-4:00


READING: After completing the DRA, I have a solid picture of where each child is as a reader.  Next week, I will help students with choices for just right Book Share books.  This week we practiced questions and next week we will likely practice predictions.

WRITING: Our writing focus is on two long range projects: the Travel Brochure and the I AM Poem.  For the Travel Brochure, we will focus on paragraph structure and using nonfiction conventions.  This is the last piece of writing for our Island project.  We will celebrate all this work on Oct 3 with the Travel Show.  For the I AM Poem, the focus has been descriptive words and poetry structure.  Some students will have time to record their poem using iMovie on their ipad.

MATH: For math we have moved on to Multiplication.  We will spend time covering efficient strategies as problems get progressively more difficult.  Our class struggled with rounding in the last unit and on the test.  So I am supporting rounding and estimating as we introduce multiplication.  I also noticed students were slow to remember their basic facts so that is something they can practice at home or anytime really. Highlighting multiplication in the real world is helpful too because we will be applying our skills to multi step problems.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  In social studies, we have used our textbook and pics/videos of geographical features to inspire our island work.  We read about resources, conservation, and economy.  Students spent a good amount of time brainstorming creative ideas for their islands.

SCIENCE: Our science focus this week was based around our Gov't Walk field trip.  We also practiced communicating about science by reading articles and responding to them.

GREAT WEEK

This was a solid week in Classroom C.  Students were productive and we achieved a lot of creative work in the classroom and in the community.  I am very impressed with students' island maps.  The art work and the accompanying writing are both very creative.  We had two fantastic community experiences this week, focusing on ecology of food at CCUA and arts in our community at Orr St Studios.  There are many great photos on the CPBL link to the right.

Here's our focus in each subject area:
READING: I have completed listening to everyone read for their DRA reading assessment.  Next week, they will respond in writing to demonstrate their comprehension.  This work is helping know each reader better and I will use this information to help choose books.  During our independent reading, we are recording or thoughts and sharing these responses to set a standard of communicating about reading.

WRITING: Students have their I AM drafts completed.  After a couple lessons on lines and synonyms, we make our finals and put the poems with our sketches.  Students also demonstrated their writing skills with their Gazetteer and the Travel Brochure for their islands. We will focus on using nonfiction features like headings and pictures when we make our brochures.

MATH: We spent a couple days looking at addition and subtraction strategies and are practicing with adding and subtracting decimals.  There will be a test on adding and subtracting decimals next Tuesday.  The next unit will be multiplication.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students are deep into their island work.  We discuss landforms and resources in class and in the field.  Students are using their experience around town in Columbia to influence their island ideas.  On our arts field trip, they sketched a piece of art or a flag or sculpture to represent island.  Next week, we will find a day for our gov't walk downtown and we will visit City Hall.

SCIENCE: Scientists are still gathering inspirations and practicing their observations and questions in our trips.  Some days we are using science tools to identify or measure or observe. On our trips, we are often discussing science topics like resource usage, ecology, and geography.

We received our ipads this week!  Very soon we will already be using learning apps to enhance our learning.

BLUES IN THE SCHOOLS COMING SOON!!!

Blues in the Schools at Grant info

Friday, 9/23

Bring $1 to buy your commemorative blues button on playground before school

Tj Wheeler arrives

10 Years of Blues in the Schools at Grant Art Exhibit at Central Bank of Boone County, 720 East Broadway, 5:30 to 6:30PM

Tuesday, 9/27

Bring $1 to buy your commemorative blues button on the playground before school

Thursday, 9/29

Arts & Blues Night at Grant, 5:30 to 7:30PM

Friday, 9/30

Music Makers Blues Revue returns to Grant for an assembly, 2:15PM

Saturday, 10/1

Grant Blues Corps performs at the Blues in the Schools stage, Roots N Blues N BBQ Fest, Stephens Amphitheater, 12:00-4:00

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

I hope everyone enjoyed their 3 day weekend.  Thank you to those who made it to the Potluck/Back to School Night. Classroom C All-Stars were creative and productive this week.  Below, there is a current update on all our work.  I also updated photos from our field experiences on the CPBL page.

Reading: This week we had discussions about genre and book shares.  Readers are recording a variety of thinking already.  We will use their reading responses in their journals to begin our reading comprehension work.  First, I am completing the DRA, District Reading Assessment.  This means I will hear all readers read out loud and they will also respond to questions about their reading.  Overall, this assessment gives me more information about a reader's comprehension and fluency.

Writing: We have 2 writing projects developing currently.  First, we are taking steps to draft and complete our I AM poems.  This poetry will focus on expressing student's lives and using descriptive phrases.  We also began our Gazetteers for our islands.  This alphabetical description of places on student islands is due Wednesday, September 14.  Many students are typing this work in a Google Doc which they can access from home.  Students are also welcome to craft a hand made Gazetteer.  And the Island Maps are Awesome!  So creative.  I'll post a few tomorrow.

Math: This week students went over their graded math test.  We started a unit on rounding, adding, and subtracting, with a focus on decimals.  This gives us a chance to review mental math addition and subtraction.  It will also give students more experience with decimals, which we will work with all year.

Social Studies:  The maps look fantastic!  We spent a lot of time finishing the maps this week.  We had time to look at pictures of real land forms around the world during ss and math.  We also discussed using inspirations from our field experiences on their islands.  Now we are describing or islands in writing through making a Gazetteer, a glossary of places on a map.

Science:  Students had time to make final copies of their field experience observation sheets.  Our gov't walk was cancelled today due to the rain.  We will make it up some nice morning in the next two weeks.  Next week, is our big trip to the urban farm at CCUA. Please consider donating to their Planting for Pantry program.  We are accepting donations through next Tuesday.  This trip includes science classes and great observation opportunities.  Kids are doing a great job in the field as learners. All of our community experiences become the foundation for our community science project this year.

TOTALLY AWESOME MAPS!!!! CHECK EM OUT!!!!

EXCEPTIONAL!!!

This post title describes how well our first community field experience went.  Scientists were attentive and well behaved.  They enjoyed our activities and learned too. The weather also cooperated with our walk to UMC campus. You can view some pics of our experience at Ellis Library and Peace Park in the 2016-2017 CPBL link to the right.  Below is a snapshot of our current learning focus in each subject and some special announcements.  I am also updating the Important Dates section as we solidify plans for more community field experiences.

Reading:  Besides getting in to our chapter book read aloud, The Phantom Tollbooth, we had time to check out books this week and get used to our Reading Workshop routine.  Readers also took a computerized reading test called the STAR.  These scores are used as one measure to gauge a reader's progress and I will share them with families throughout the year.  Next week, we will continue practicing the structure of our independent reading routine.

Writing:  Writers this week focused on their I AM sketch.  This work will be paired with a descriptive, autobiographical I AM poem.  We will work on drafting our poems next week and take a spelling inventory to start our word study program.

Math:  This week in math we investigated place value in various stations.  Each student also received practice sheets to prepare for our math assessment on place value.  Students will be tested over place value and comparing with whole numbers to the millions and decimals to the thousandths.

Social Studies:  Cartographers worked on their World Maps this week.  Next week, we will look at more geographical concepts and begin our Island Close Up Maps.

Science:  In science this week, we prepared for our first community field experiences, did a field guide scavenger hunt, and went through binocular training at Stewart Park.  Next week, we have 2 more community field experiences: Flat Branch/MKT on Thursday and DBRL library on Friday.

Special Announcements:

Please join us on Thursday, September 1st for our all-school potluck.  Bring a dish to share and enjoy getting to know other Grant families before spending some time with your student’s classroom teacher for Back to School Night.  The potluck is on our playground from 5-6:15 pm.  Following the potluck, families will move into the gym for staff introductions and a greeting from the PTA.  From 6:30-7:15, families are encouraged to go to their student’s classroom to learn about the upcoming year of instruction and focus.  In case of bad weather, we will hold the potluck in the cafeteria.  We look forward to seeing you all there!

Blues in the Schools at Grant and the Art & Blues Night at Grant are just around the corner.  Please bring your donations for the Silent Auction to the Grant office ASAP to help continue to fund our blues residencies.  Some popular auction items include but are not  limited to:  artsy items, jewelry, gift cards for restaurants, baskets of products, homemade bread, homemade craft, etc.  Drop your item off in the office and be sure to get a thank you receipt.

TIME TO SHINE ALL STARS!!!

Whew, the first week is complete and it went well.  Reflecting upon our experience this week, I have to say our most impressive quality shining through is community.  These kids worked very well together though various group activities.  I was very pleased with our work in math and science groups especially.  Below you will see a description of our work so far and some information about class procedures and updates.  Also, check out the pics of our awesome science work!

Math: In math, students worked in groups to play a couple games and also to create multiple towers.  We used our towers to discuss number patterns and also they will be used to decorate our math closet.  Again, mathmagicians worked very well in groups this week.

Science:  We spent the majority of our science time practicing making quality observations.  Scientists made observations during a science experiment and also on our school playground an garden areas. A lot of our science experiences in September will include walking community field trips around our city.  Please read the letter in the Friday Folder about our community experiences.  In fact, next week we will already have 2 walking field experiences and students are already planning to be prepared.

Social Studies:  As geographers, we looked at books about the earth and we also started our world map project.  This is the first assignment for the Where in the World theme that integrates reading, writing, art, media, and geography.  There is also a Where in the World packet in the Friday Folder explaining this project.  The WITW project will be our focus for a most of Aug/Sept and we will celebrate with the Travel Show on Oct. 3.

Writing:  In writing, writers have started their I AM poems.  These poems provide an opportunity for us to learn more about each other and practice using descriptive language.  The final copies will be outstanding pieces of work kids and families will be proud of.

Reading:  In reading, we spent time making sure we had our materials and read a lot of read aloud picture books.  Next week, we will take the STAR assessment and begin our independent reading routines.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. Our recess/lunch time has changed to 11:55-12:45 in order to help our kindergartners move efficiently through the lunch line.

2. Please check the Friday Folder for these important notices and others:

 Ecological Literacy Study with the University of Missouri - this packet requires parent permission and is part of a great partnership we created with the Architecture and Education dept. at UMC.  This packet has all the information on the program and will provide us with strategies to use the fabulous Ecoschoolhouse more effectively in our curriculum. 

CPBL Letter:  This letter describes our Community Project Based Learning curriculum we use throughout the year as the base of our integrated science work.  

WITW packet:  This packet provides information and due dates for the projects involved in our Where in the World Theme. 

3.  This blog is the best way to stay up to date with classroom information.  It is updated more than once a week on average with information, photos, and important announcements.  I will also send a weekly email with the same information.  For a few weeks, I will also send a paper copy in the Friday Folder but after that I will only send paper copies if requested so please let me know if you would like to receive paper copies of the blog.  Thanks!


With so much happening the first week, I may have forgot something so please don't hesitate to email or call with questions.  Overall, it was a very good week and we are in the swing of things already!

SOME OF THE BOOKS WE'VE READ ALREADY:

 

KIDS WORKING ON A MATH PUZZLE:

 

OUR FIRST SCIENCE EXPERIMENT (mixing dish soap with milk and food coloring to see the reaction and then discussing cleaning animals after oil spills).

 

 

 

AWESOME SCIENCE OBSERVATIONS: