We were so lucky to be able to attend a Pawtucket Red Sox game on Thursday. It was a beautiful day for a game and they won 5-1. Here are some pictures!  (we were in the shade!)

Friday was our last field day. We were a little sad, but were so happy to be able to lead it. As usual, Mr. Connell planned such an amazing day. It was baseball themed. Our flash mob dance was so successful! Here are some pictures! 

Hi everyone! I cannot believe how quickly trimester three has gone by. Your little babies will be in middle school soon - get the tissues! Our calendar is jam packed from now until the last day, but I know the kids can handle everything.

Today we set our 5 butterflies free that we watched and studied since they were eggs. The butterflies didn't want to leave the warmth and safety of the kids' hands, but we wished them luck and said some kind words at their release ceremony. (officiated by Trey) Here are a few pictures!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great vacation despite the crazy weather. We have only 8 short weeks left to cram a lot in! Here is a snapshot of the last couple of weeks!

In science, our little red worms are slowly becoming our bigger red worms. We also learned all about producers, consumers and food webs. Here are a few pictures of our science groups creating food webs with pictures of animals, plants and algae! 

In Science, we have moved right into our last kit, Living Systems. We have already created habitats for the 150 red worms that were happily delivered to my classroom. (yuck) We used soil, newspaper, apple cores, egg shells and lettuce to create the new homes for our pets and then added about 20 of our new red friends to each of the 8 habitats that were created. I must admit, I was a bit grossed out but was amazed at the brave kids who jumped at the chance to play with worms! (Go Deeani!!) Check out the bravery:

Hi everyone! What a gorgeous day! I hope you all got to enjoy it in some way. I had a fun filled weekend of karaoke singing (I'm terrible), an overnight Mohegan getaway with my sister, riding bikes on the bike path and playing Cars 3 Thunder Hollow Demolition Derby with my boys for hours on end. (and then for more hours on top of those)

Let's talk about some great things happening in 5E!

We just finished Chapter 6 in math. The class worked very hard on understanding the difficulty of multiplying and dividing decimals. The test went home in their Friday folders. We are moving right along and this week will tackle fractions and find out how to determine the greatest common factor and least common multiple. I don't know about you, but  I haven't solved for a GCF in about 30 years, but after watching a YouTube video, (or 2), I am a pro and your kids will be too. We are also starting to practice some problems they will see on the RICAS to get them familiar with the layout and vocabulary. 

For the remainder of this week in reading and social studies, the students will be doing a group Olympic project. I am loving watching the Olympics with my husband and kids and have heard from a lot of your kids that you all are loving it too! The class will be divided into 6 groups and have to create a Google Slide presentation along with an oral presentation. Some of the big questions that they will be answering are: 

* Explain the significance of the fact that North Korea and South Korea marched in the opening ceremonies under one flag.

*Explain why the Olympics were cancelled in 1940 and 1944.

*Explain why the future of the Winter Olympics is in jeopardy.

*Compare and contrast reasons why a city would NOT want to host the Olympics vs. why would a city want to host the Olympics.

*Compare and contrast the facilities of the first Olympics to the facilities of today's Olympics.

*Explain why the athletes are being given a stuffed animal named Soohorang and not flowers on the podium when they win their event?

This is just one small part of their project. Each group will be assigned one of the following topics in which to research and create their presentations:
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Pyeong Chang, South Korea, athletes, events, the International  Olympic Committee and the history of the Winter Games.

In Science, we just completed an experiment in which the students tested to see if a solution that they created could become saturated. They were rock stars! They understood the concepts and had so many little side debates about what was happening and why. These little conversations they have with each other are the reason why I truly love being a 5th grade teacher. Some of their new science buzz words are concentrated, saturated, dilute, solution and mixture. Throw one at them and see if they can explain it! Here are a few pictures of them creating their saturated solutions! 

Our field trip to Gillette was amazing (despite the weather). Thank you to all of the chaperones who joined us. It was nice to see so many, usually we are limited. The students were such amazing representatives of LaPerche and did so well taking on their roles of team owner, VP of Public Relations, VP of Finance, and VP of Marketing, just to name a few. They had a $50,000,000 budget to work with to choose players and arena facilities and to top it all off, they had to present their ideas to the rest of us. It was great to see them rise to the occasion. Here are some pictures of our great day. As always, please let me know if you want one emailed to you! ​

In Science, we are continuing with Mixtures and Solutions. We are conducting experiments that allow the students to observe the concentration and dilution of solutions that they create. We are making fruit punch and salt water solutions and then observing color, weight, capacity and lightness/darkness. Thank you to my co-teacher, Meg Mechler, and our materials manager, Chloe for their help. Here are some pictures of our latest experiment. 

We have jumped right in to our new science kit, Mixtures and Solutions. So far we have created a few mixtures with salt, gravel and diatomaceous earth (see if your child can remember that name!) After we created these mixtures, we brainstormed on methods in which to separate them. We used coffee filters and screens and our predictions were almost spot on!  Thank you to Meg Mechler for lending us her science expertise in becoming our science co-teacher. Here are a few pictures of the 'scientists of room 6'. (they love the goggles!)

Sorry we haven't posted in awhile! We have been so busy, the time is flying by. We have so much information to share with you! 

We have moved on to our non fiction unit of study in our Reader's Workshop. The past couple of weeks we have been studying text structure. We have worked on comparing and contrasting, sequencing, and cause and effect. We are almost done reading Scat and this book lends itself to so many connections to text structure that sometimes our book discussions are longer than  my read aloud. A fun activity that we did during the cause and effect lessons was the making of a 'chain of events' chain. Each pair of students was given a situation (a cause) and then had to come up with an event, which would lead to another event and so on. They created an actual paper chain. It was cool because after they shared, they were able to combine some links of their chain to another to see how authors can take stories in so many directions from just one idea. Here are some pictures of our final masterpieces! 

In writing, Mr. Austin moved onto Informational Writing. The students are excited to be hearing back from the companies they wrote to - a few are coming in each day! Don't forget to ask your child if his or hers is one of them! This week they are working on a special project modeled after the 'Twas the night before Christmas' book. This writing piece gives students the opportunity to revise an old favorite  by choosing their own topic and making it their own. Some ideas are the night before Halloween, Hong Kong, Monday, Winter Break, School and Twas the night before I went to McDonald's. I can't wait to hear them!

I also wanted to give a special thank you to Courtney and Mr. and Mrs. Wakim. They donated so many of Courtney's books to many grades throughout LaPerche. If you're cleaning out your book cases, we will gladly take any donations!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday break and I will see you in 2018!

Happy November! In my opinion, this is the best time of year. Today was a great day. We played in the leaves and went for a nice bike ride on the Quonset bike path, which we are lucky to have right across the street! 

Last week's power outage was pretty unexpected - I can't believe we already have to make up a day. We lost power for four days and stayed with my parents in Jamestown. The commute was a bit longer, but driving through town while watching the beautiful sunrise was worth it. Here is a picture I took on Halloween morning.

Halloween was a great day too! We got to meet with our 2nd grade reading buddies. They read Halloween books to us and we did a fun context clues activity. Then Mr. Austin did a very dramatic reading of The Perfect Pumpkin Pie. Here are a few  pictures. 

On Wednesday, we were so lucky to have Dr. Paolucci come and show us some very cool science experiments. She taught us about the differences between fluorescence and bioluminescence, how the heat in our hands can cause movement in inanimate objects and even made explosions! The kids were wide eyed with their jaws on the ground during these amazing experiments. Check out some pictures! 

We also had a very busy week in room 6. We finished Chapter 2 in math, and I must say, the class did amazing on their assessment. I am so proud of them. We will begin patterns in division and 2 digit division next week.

In reading, we are beginning a unit on characters. We will dive into how characters change during stories and how other characters impact their decisions and outcomes. The class will make connections to different characters at different points in their books as well.

The students are doing amazingly in their reading stamina and are really enjoying running their own book discussions. Another reason I love fifth grade so much is how the conversations take different turns and how different every reader's point of view is. This week and we will be benchmarking on STAR reading and math and will be administering F and Ps as well. I will send a note home giving you your child's new reading level and  any notes I have taken during the assessment. 

Mr. Austin reports that the class is getting stronger each week in writing. They have covered what is involved in writing a personal essay, including great beginnings and endings, transition words, writing sentences with conjunctions, strong verbs, and using show don't tell. (show us with words how a character is feeling, don't tell us. Ex: Sam's face was beet red and he was stomping his feet when he learned that it was bedtime.) They are loving the creativity in writing narratives.

In Science, we just finished our constellation unit. Students researched a constellation, located it and then drew it using points. Then they had to lay on the ground and try to mimic the shape with their bodies. Thank you to Mrs. Mechler for all of her help. It wasn't easy, the the outcomes were amazing! Check out some finished products! 

 HEALTH
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MINDFUL TASTING!
This week we would like to showcase Health with Mrs. Forte.
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One activity that we did in health is mindful tasting. Mindful tasting is used for tasting your food slowly and that helps you taste it better. The first step is to look at the snack that you have in your palm. The next step is to put your snack up to your nose and smell it. A great trick is to close your eyes and your mouth to really concentrate on your smelling. The other trick is to put it in your mouth. STOP HERE! Do not chew your snack even though you want to. Then you just have to chew your snack and then swallow it. Then Mrs. Forte asked us to tell her the differences from before and then after you did mindful tasting. I said that my cookie tasted a lot sweeter that when I just ate it without being mindful about tasting.  That is what we learned in health this week! Check out Julia and Lexi demonstrating the mindful tasting along sequence with other fun pictures from class!

Here are some outside pictures of us enjoying this gorgeous weather!!!