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Happy Sunday! We had a short week last week, but we did so much! Raking leaves was such a success. Special thanks to Kerri McMahon and Tim Guertin for battling the cold and helping us out. The homeowners were beyond thankful and I am excited to make this a yearly occurrence. It was cold and windy, but the kids raked and bagged 30 bags of leaves. The Department of Public Works also helped out and picked up the bags that day so they didn't have to stay too long on the curbside. Thank you to Melissa at the DPW for making that happen! Check out some pictures of the kids hard at work. On Friday, The Patriot Guard Riders joined us for our yearly Veterans celebration. We were so lucky because they invited our fifth graders to line the main hallway holding flags in memory for those who stood for us. It was an incredible sight to see.
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Hi Everyone! What an incredibly busy week! This week's blog is going to show you more of what we did rather than tell you. First, on Monday, we had an afternoon of pumpkin math! The fifth grade estimated and then did actual measurements of their pumpkin's weight, circumference, and height and determined if their pumpkin sank or floated. Then the pumpkins were cut open so they could dissect the inside and check to see their estimations of the number of seeds were correct. They had such a great time. Thank you to Sherri and Kerri for their help! On Tuesday afternoon, we were lucky to have Dr. Paolucci join us for some Halloween Science fun. Students learned about properties of materials and chemical reactions through science demonstrations with a spooky theme. Disappearing flasks, fortune fish, fire breathing pumpkins, and water changing to wine to milk and then to soda appeared mysterious but had scientific explanations. Thank you, Dr. Paolucci! Wednesday was definitely the best day of the week. Our class created and ran an 8 station Halloween Spooktacular Fun Festival for the students in Ms. Feeley, Mrs. Hayward, and Mrs. Harrison's classes. The students brainstormed engaging and challenging activities for the classes to enjoy. I am so proud of their hard work! Here are some pictures of the brainstorming and creative sessions for the Halloween Spooktacular Festival! The weather was so beautiful on Thursday, we had to take advantage of it! Here are some pictures of us working on two by two digit multiplication. with partners. We ran over to the playground after and snuck in a quick extra recess. They deserved it! Wow! October disappeared so quickly! We. had a such a great week. Science was definitely the best part of each day because each lesson had such engaging experiments. First, we studied that leaves get their nutrients through veins, similar to humans. There are three types of veins. For a homework pass, ask your child to identify all three and give you a description of each. (parallel - vertical lines, palmate - many larger veins spreading from the bottom, pinnate- smaller veins spreading from one main center vein). After learning about the different types, we went outside and searched for examples of them. Check out some pictures! We also had to say goodbye to our redworm compost jars. (mainly due to the amount of fruit flies inside the jars!) Four weeks ago, the students made predictions about the worms growing with and without the sun's energy and they were spot on! Our worms, both inside and out of the black bags, thrived on nutrients from leaves, fruit and the sun. They were so big when we released them. After we let them go, we had a party in which the kids did the worm dance and had piggy back races. We hope the worms live a happy life in the LaPerche woods! In Physical Education, the students had their Quidditch drafts. The teams are created and the tournaments will begin next week. Good luck to all of the players! This week in reading and writing, we finished researching our 8 big questions, and completed our glossary and works consulted page. (new words for bibliography) .I want to thank Kerri McMahon and Melissa Oliver for helping us finish. Matt, the representative from ARC (the company who created the program I am piloting) came in on Friday to teach a lesson to our class, First of all, I would like to say that the class was so amazingly engaged and respectful. There were about 13 adults in our classroom for about an hour and every student was at the top of his/her participation game. We received so many compliments, I felt like such a proud mama. Shout out to Cameron and Jacob Sylvester who got up and offered all of the adults chairs when they came in. That was all their idea! Such gentleman. Starting Monday, the students will now take the information from each research question and turn them into longer paragraphs, which will turn into pages of their ecosystem books. They will be writing a lot over the next few weeks, I can't wait to share the books with you! Here are some pictures of the exhausted researchers. I would also like to thank the Guilfoyle family for donating the awesome new black video chairs. The kids love them! Our class is still spending time with the students in Miss Feeley's room. every Friday. She shared these pictures and also shared that her students absolutely love when we come in and read and play with them. Seeing the smiles on my students' faces when they come back to the classroom is, for a lack of a better word, so awesome. We are looking forward to doing so many more activities with Miss Feeley and Mrs. Hayward's classes. Hi everyone! What a great week we had. Our first fifth grade field trip was Wednesday to Project Cope in Cranston. (Challenging, Outdoor, Personal, Experience) The students learned how to trust their classmates as they worked as a team to accomplish different elements. These elements allowed the students to work on communications skills, team work, decision making, and problem solving. The last activity had the students using cooperation and trust to climb over a 12 foot wall. Thank you to Mr. Connell for planning such a memorable day! Check out some pictures! As you know, in fifth grade, the students are allowed to eat snack whenever they want. It is nice to see so many healthy choices. Notice there was a Cheeze It Club one day too! Here is a picture of our new fifth grade superstar, T Money and a few from the fire safety assembly! Hi everyone! I am sure you've all heard, THE WORMS ARE HERE! We had such a great week in science, and thanks to Mrs. Fossa-Moretti and Ms. McMahon's help, the kids were able to create their redworm compost jars! Some were a little leery when touching the worms, but others quickly stepped in and helped. We had great discussions about how important it is to the ecosystem to keep it balanced and how all living and non living organisms play an important role. For a homework pass, ask your child about the importance of a worm's role to its ecosystem! We also navigated through the similarities and differences of food webs and food chains and discussed the importance of both to different ecosystems. We dove a bit deeper (pun intended) into an marine ecosystem called the Monterey Bay Kelp Forest. For this activity, the students had to study the prey and predators on their cards and set up a food web to show the different roles of producers, consumers and decomposers. Check out some pictures below! In Physical Education, Mr. Connell has been teaching the class about the different positions and roles and responsibilities in flag football. I love to watch them play. There are some fierce competitors in this class - especially the ladies! Check out these action shots! During our ELA block, we are continuing to research and take notes on our chosen ecosystems. This past week we learned about identifying the main idea of a reading passage and what qualifies as a supporting detail. The students are doing a great job putting a sticky note on all important information as they are reading, which is then transferred to the graphic organizers during our writing block. We have finished research questions one, two, and three, and will be working on questions four and five this week. After all eight research questions are complete, students will then move on to writing and illustrating their own nonfiction book. At a professional development session last week, I learned that the company we are piloting the program (ARC) buys books that are well written and illustrated. They will pay up to $500 to publish a student's book and include it in the kit! We have finished chapter 1 in math, and I am so happy to say that everybody received an 80% or above on the chapter test. I am so proud of how hard they worked through decimals, place value, and the dreaded expanded form! We are now moving on to prime factorization, multiples, and exponents. Don’t unbuckle those seatbelts yet because it’s only going to get more difficult!   Last week was our first 5 day week. I was exhausted by 3:20 on Friday and was ready for a nap. We are continuing on work on practicing our daily routines and getting used to our daily schedule. In reading, we did a novel study on Frindle. I am so impressed with this class's reading stamina. We read 3 chapters each day and discussed the relationship between the characters and how they changed throughout the book. The students made connections to themselves and their relationships to teachers and friends which led to great in depth discussions within their groups. Here are a few pictures of how well they focus while reading. In math, we are continuing to practice place value to the millions. This week we talked about decimals and how moving the decimal place to the left or right increases the value by ten or decreases it by 1/10. We did a fun activity outside in which the class got into groups and without talking, they had to create numbers that I yelled out. Some found it very difficult not to talk! :) We got through about 6 rounds before a gust of wind came and quickly ended our game. Here are some pictures! After the wind ruined our game, we decided to have recess instead! Here are some pictures! Friday was our Fun Festival and the kids had a blast. Thank you to all of the parents who volunteered to help! We couldn't have done it without you. In science we are learning about the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Ask your child what each of the prefixes mean for a homework pass! This week we will be discovering the differences between a food web and a food chain and create both using cards with information about a kelp forest and a bay. Our red worms will also be delivered this week so we can create a worm habitat from composting! In writing, we discussed the steps in writing a constructed response. We use the RACE model which guides the students through each step in writing the response. They did a great job and are learning how to cite using quotation marks and page numbers. See below for the breakdown of RACE.     We had another hot, but busy week. We began our first chapter in Math, which is all about place value to the millions. We learned to represent numbers in 4 different ways. Ask your child if he/she can teach you the four ways, and it he/she is correct, let me know and he/she can get a no homework pass! Check the anchor chart below for the correct answer.  In writing, we are learning about 5 types of writing created by Dr. John Collins. Smithfield teachers had the privilege of having Dr. Collins as a guest speaker for our first professional development day of the year. He was so amazing and very inspirational. The students are really grasping this format and are beginning to build more organized and focused writing. This is the chart we have hanging in our classroom for the students to refer to when needed.  In reading, the students are deep into their independent books are are getting back into the swing of writing responses to their reading. I am piloting a new ELA program created by the American Reading Company and we are diving right. We are beginning the year focusing on informational writing, and the reading resources we received through ARC coincide so nicely with our first Science kit, Living Systems. The students will be focusing on Ecosystems and will be researching and writing a book on a topic of their choice. I am so excited for you to check out our resources at Open House. Here are a few anchor charts that were created!   In Science, we learned about the steps of the Scientific Method. The students practiced these steps in a fun gummy bear experiment that took them through the process. We left a gummy bear in a cup overnight with either plain water, salt water, baking soda and water, sugar water, and vinegar. Ask your little scientists what their hypotheses were and if they were correct. Here are a few pictures of this experiment. It was torture for them not to eat the gummy bears!  4 days down, 176 to go! (but who is counting?) What a great week we had. We welcomed a new student, Arianna, which brings us to a total of 25 students! The fifth grade is now at capacity. Even though we felt as if we were melting, we got so many tasks accomplished. We talked about 5th grade expectations, flexible seating, classroom rules, reading stamina, problem solving strategies, completed our first STEM activity. and began our read aloud. (Scat by Carl Hiaason) We also had the pleasure of visiting with Ms. Feeley's room this week to meet her students. We read some of their favorite books with them and are looking forward to spending time in her class to get to know the students even better! Here are some pictures of our new friends.       We also jumped right in to begin building our reading stamina. The students are loving the different options to sit on while enjoying their books. Here are a few pictures of our flexible seating options! 5E birthdays! (November needs a retake to include Arianna.) Here are some pictures from our first STEM activity. It was a fun teamwork building activity that used string, rubber bands and plastic cups. The students needed to work together in groups of four to pull on strings which expanded a rubber band. The rubber band has to manipulate the 8 plastic cups into different shapes that I would show them. It was the coolest STEM activity I have ever seen. They absolutely loved it and showed amazing teamwork. The class also had fun solving math problems as a team to try and turn themselves back into people after being turned into robots. (Don't tell them it was a big 4th grade math review!) Another fun activity was the class got into groups and brainstormed what they thought a good fifth grade teacher does, says, is and is not. They did a fantastic job and I think I passed all of their criteria. If I hadn't, it would make for a long year! I got Jonas' permission to share this hysterical moment in 5E. In fifth grade, the students are able to snack all day. Friday morning at around 9:15, I was walking around the classroom, talking to the class about the plan for the day. We were also introducing ourselves to Arianna and giving her the ins and outs of 5E. I then became fascinated by Jonas, sitting in his seat very attentively, nodding his head showing me that he is listening, all the while, constructing a Lunchable cheese pizza - at 9:15 am! I have seen a variety of snacks kids eat first thing, but none that ever caught me off guard as Jonas' pizza did on Friday. It was a great laugh to end a hot week! ! Hi Everyone! I am so excited for a new school year. Despite the heat, we got through our first day schedule and are ready for another hot day tomorrow. Check back this weekend for more of what we did this week!
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