Crenshaw

Before Thanksgiving break, we finished Crenshaw, a new book by Katherine Applegate.

The book centers on Jackson, a boy whose family struggles to make ends meet and has spent some time living in their car in the past. When times are tough, Jackson's imaginary friend, Crenshaw, a giant cat, always shows up. This is a touching and thought provoking book. 

Here are our responses to Crenshaw on Padlet: 

Created with Padlet

Red Ribbon Week/Spirit Week

We had a fantastic week! Here is a peek! 

Monday 

Tuesday - Tropical/Aloha Day!

Wednesday - Sports Day!

 We wrote kind sidewalk chalk messages as part of Kind Kids Club! 

 Thursday - Crazy for Kindness!

Our awesome TK buddies gave us cards, so we brought them cards as well! 

Friday - Costumes

The Spiderwick Chronicles Book Review

The SpiderWick Chronicles

Review by Akshaj

Three ordinary kids Simon, Jared, and Helen Grace discover an ancient book in their creepy household attic. The house belonged to their aunt who ‘supposedly’ was mad. She is now in an asylum. She kept saying that fairies bring her food. Could their book be the secret to their aunt's life and fairies?

Will they discover the secret? Read SpiderWick Chronicles and find out!

This book was 10 out of 10. I loved how the author described it. It even gave me chills! The author is Holly Black. It is short but good. When I finished the first I wanted to read more. Warning!! It is creepy!

  

8/31/15-9/4/15 Update

By: Lily and Marley          

Mondays are always fun in this class! Here is this picture of when we were working on genius hour. These two girls are looking at each others topics and giving suggestions.

    Genius hour is a time for us to research a topic that we love. It’s one of the best parts of the day!

I love Genius Hour!!!

On Wednesday we did book clubs and it was so fun to talk about the books!

This group is reading Rules by Cynthia Lord

This group is reading The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis.

These girls are working on plot diagrams!

Plot diagrams are really helpful when summarizing a book or video.

On Thursday we made “helicopters” out of paper for our S.T.E.M (science, technology, engineering, and math) challenge.

We also finished Fish in a Tree.

Anne of Green Gables Review by Katie

 Anne of Green Gables

Review by Katie

     This book  is about a ten-year-old  orphan named Anne Shirley, who gets adopted by brother and sister, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. Anne has a very wild imagination and her tongue talks for two!  She meets her bosom friend, Diana Barry and the two have many exciting adventures together. They especially like giving different places different names, like : Lake of shining waters, Idlewild, Lover’s Lane, and many more names. During class she is called carrots because of her hair, by Gilbert Blythe, and she breaks her slate over his head! Believe it or not she doesn’t talk to him for five years! This is a very good book  and  I would rate this book a million stars!

The One and Only Ivan Review by Emma

The One and Only Ivan

BY: Katherine Applegate

*****

Review by Emma 

The One and Only Ivan by: Katherine Applegate is a book about a gorilla that lives in the mall  in a cage. He was raised by the mall owner and his wife. Know he lives in the mall with an elephant named Stella (who is getting a little old) There is a new elephant named Ruby who is younger and got trapped by some hunters. Ivan loves to paint. They want to go to a zoo where all of the other animals are. So that is all i am going to say about this book. You would like this book if you liked fantasy. This is also a true story. So dive into an adventure with Ivan and his friends and see what they are up to.

First Three Weeks!

We've been in 5th grade for three weeks! WOW - time flies!

We've started reading and writing workshop.

We’ve also started math stations. Students visit Math with Teacher, Math by Myself, Math with Someone (games), Math Writing, and Math with Technology.

We’ve already finished our cells mini unit, and are now learning about Native Americans.

We’ve also been participating in STEM challenges every Thursday!

Also, as of today (the chairs just arrived after school!) we have all our new classroom furniture! Now students have brand new stools, hokki stools, and chairs to sit in!

What a great and busy three weeks it has been!

Akshaj's Trip to Chicago

Chicago, my memorable trip!

I had a very enjoyable and interesting trip. We saw a lot of interesting and odd shapes of towers. I was bewildered to see the downtown sunset.

What was most enjoyable was the Willis Tower which is one of the highest towers in the world. We went to the 103rd  floor of Willis tower ( surprisingly!) was almost a mile long.

Chicago looked breathtakingly beautiful in the sunset.

(Chicago view from Willis Tower)

Next morning, with a little tiredness, we went to drive around Lake Michigan and later we took an architectural and historical tour in the lake in the boat. The sun glinted of the water and was a perfect view.

                   

(View of Downtown from Michigan lake)

After lunch, the same day, we walked to downtown to see THE BEAN!

As we walked we saw a lot of odd sculptures and tall buildings. As we reached there we stopped dead in our tracks.The beauty was incomparable.

IT WAS A GIANT SILVER BEAN!

It looked breathtaking. It looked so weird on the underside. The fact is The Bean was created by an Indian British person.

Baxter

We went to the famous Science museum of Chicago. The main attraction was robots! I’m not talking like a robotic hand, real playing robots! There was cards and tic tac toe! The robot who did tic tac toe was baxter. He was my favorite.We both lost. The octopi one was cards. I won against him.

Overall, my trip was one of the breathtaking one.

Thanks for reading!

Zerlan's Camping Trip

My Camping Trip

Everyone is excited to go camping especially if it is first time like me. I had a wonderful time and a memorable experience during my first camping trip.

First, I was feeling excited but nervous because this is my first time to travel without my family. A day before the trip, I was packing my supplies like my sleeping bag, shoes, toothbrush and especially my allergy medications. The campsite was located in Running Deer, Marysville California. It was a 3 - day camping retreat last June 31 to Aug 2, 2015

Second, we reached to Divine Mercy Catholic Church where my group called the Squires will be meeting. We are a group of boys who help our church to learn to be responsible and independent. We are supposed to meet at 11:00 A.M to 12:00 P.M. Once everyone was there, we got all our things and put them inside the cars. I was feeling brave when we were leaving. I saw amazing sceneries like mountains, forest, lakes and much more. I’ve seen different animals like deer, bobcats, owls, woodpeckers and others.

Third, once we reached to the site, we started to set up everything. We set up our four tent then got the campfire started. We got our belongings and put them in our tents. We then got to do our activities! We went  hiking, swimming, played, football and soccer. I was brave to go hiking with my slippers only. It was painful but I made it to the top. I felt happy,brave,awesome and fun that I got to do a lot of cool things. Then we also ate delicious food like steak, burgers, hotdogs and more!

Lastly, we packed everything inside the cars and drive back home. I was sad that we were leaving but we can go again another time. In conclusion, everyone should go camping on their first camping trip like me. It can be tough at first but later on it would be FUN!