Sunday, September 11, 2016

Our first 3 weeks!

We have had a great first three weeks of school in 5th grade!

Here are some of the highlights.

We've participated in team STEM challenges.

We made the longest paper chains possible using one piece of paper and one yard of tape. 



We also created popsicle stick and tape bridges designed to support the weight of one or two books! 




We've kicked off our math stations, and they've been going very well! 
Our math stations right now are Math with Teacher, Math by Myself, Math Games, and Math Tiles. 












Our class has had fantastic independent reading stamina right from the first day of school! We spend about 20-30 minutes reading our books every day. Never is flexible seating more important than when we choose the perfect spot to curl up with a good book! 

We've also been learning about reading genres. After defining them and looking at lots of examples (and having book raffles to determine who gets to read the examples first), we talked about our genre preferences and created some genre goals. It's great to have genres we like the most, but we also want to constantly stretch ourselves to try out new genres we may not read as much! 




We also identified the genres of books in our classroom and sorted books in the Scholastic book orders based on genre! 





We've started having Community Circle every week. During Community Circle, we have the opportunity to talk through problem solving and deal with things that are important to us. Ms. Hines, our amazing counselor, kicked that off with us the first week of school, and she also came and read What Do You Do With a Problem? to our class. 

On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, we have Star in Motion outside on the blacktop with our whole school! We've already learned quite a few dances! Feel free to come join us for Star in Motion from 8:30-8:45 on these mornings. We love having parents dance with us! 

We've had so much fun so far, and I am so excited to see what the rest of the year brings! 




Saturday, August 20, 2016

Our Classroom!

Here are some photos of our classroom! Looking forward to seeing everyone Monday between 3:00 and 6:00 for meet the teacher, and Wednesday for the first day of school! I hope everyone is excited for a great year. I know I am!


















Monday, June 27, 2016

End of the Year Video

Here is our end of the year video. This was truly an amazing year!

I hope everyone has a fantastic summer!

Friday, May 13, 2016

Angel Island

May 11-12, we traveled to Angel Island and lived as Civil War soldiers at Camp Reynolds. Every squad made a trailer to chronicle their experience.










Sunday, May 1, 2016

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Masterminds by Gordon Korman

We recently finished the book Masterminds by Gordon Korman as our read aloud. Next, we are starting the sequel, Masterminds: Criminal Destiny.

Here are our reflections about the book:


Sunday, December 6, 2015

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: