Hi Everyone! Just a quick picture post. It was so beautiful today that we had our math lesson outside and then an extra recess. What a great way to recharge!

Hi Everyone! I hope you're all having a great weekend. We have been so busy! First of all, the pasta dinner was such a success. My family and I were amazed at how professional and confident all of the 'employees' were. Thank you to the fabulous team who waited on my husband, my kids and me. We had a great time visiting with LaPerche families and my boys loved seeing all of your kids! 

The most exciting news to share is about our field trip to Gillette! It was such an amazing field trip and the students represented LaPerche so well. I want to thank all of the chaperones for coming along with us and for your patience waiting for lunch! During our trip, we toured the hall of fame and learned about Patriots history and were able to engage in the interactive exhibits. The students participated in a STEM activity. It was an engineering challenge in which the students had to design a helmet that would protect the skull and brain of a football player. They learned about all of the different styles of helmets football players have worn throughout the years. The guide talked about the importance of designing a helmet to protect the skull and brain of the football players. The students were given a variety of materials and time to create their helmets. One group had to design the outer part of the helmet and one group had to design the inside part that protects the brain. They tested their designs and we were so amazed at their creativity - they did so well! For a homework pass, ask your child which president is responsible for the invention of the football helmet! Check out some pictures of our day. 

In science, we are continuing to learn about the different components of the solar system. A few of the activities we have done over the past few weeks were so much fun.  The students were divided into groups of three and each group was given a planet to study. They had to create an informational poster and present it to the class. They did so well and the students learned so much new information. Another fun activity was the students were able to create the phases of the moon with Oreos. Check out these pictures!

We are also learning about different constellations in science. For this activity, students turned their bodies into a constellation that they will now research and report to the class. Here are a few pictures of our 5th grade constellation kids! 

In reading, we are well into our guided reading groups. The groups have finished their first novels and will choose their new ones tomorrow. They are really enjoying our new reading schedule. This rotating schedule gives the students the freedom to practice time management skills. They are given an assignment during their group's meeting and it may not be due for 2,3 or even 4 days and it's their job to find the time to do it and get it done. Some choose to do it right away, and others prefer to independently read during our reading block and do their guided reading 'jobs' at night. Either way, this freedom is a great preparation for middle school. Here is a peek at our schedule. It looks scary, but the kids are so used to the routine and do a great job. 

We are also continuing with narrative writing. We are focusing on character point of view and perspective and how these points of view affect the way the reader interprets the story. This week we will be reading a story about Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, written from Bunyan's point of view. We will take notes on his perspective and how the reader and other characters react to certain events in the story. We will then reread it and record how Johnny Appleseed must have reacted to the same events. The students will rewrite the narrative from Johnny Appleseed's point of view. This is such a eye opening activity for the students about how people interpret the same events differently. This often leads to many conversations about things that happen on the playground - they often try to see things from the other's point of view. In grammar, we will be focusing on the perfect verb tense. 

In math, we are well into chapter 6. The students are working hard multiplying and dividing decimals. They are rising to the challenge of this chapter and are impressing me more and more. I am also loving the confidence this class has in asking for extra help when needed. Chapter 7 will bring us to fractions, focusing on greatest common factor and least common multiple. Do those words bring back memories? Have a great week! 

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year! It's been a while, so I want to catch you up on all of the fantastic things we have been doing.

Reading Buddies
We are so happy to be paired with Mrs. Clough's class for reading buddies. We met in December and did some fun getting to know you activities. Each student is paired with either one or two second graders. After they got to know a little about their partner, they chose their favorite holiday book and read it together. We are looking forward to many more fun times with our new friends. Check out some pictures! 

We participated in two STEM activities in December. The first challenge was called the Gumdrop Christmas Tree Challenge. Each group was given 20 gumdrops and 20 toothpicks. Their objective was to construct the tallest possible Christmas tree from toothpicks and gumdrops. They had to come up with a procedure and they were timed in three different trials. The students had to then discuss what went well and what was challenging in each round. They then had to change a little part of their procedure between each trial to try and improve their design. I measured each tree with a ruler and the winner was 12 1/2 inches tall! They demonstrated such great teamwork and had so much fun. Check out some pictures!

Another fun STEM activity was to devise a plan to wrap an egg, in traditional Christmas present wrapping materials, in a way that would protect the egg from cracking when dropped from a ladder. The students were so creative and came up with such unique ideas and had so much fun working together. 

 In science, we are continuing to learn about the Earth, moon and sun. One of our activities took us outside to investigate how the position of the sun affects our shadows. We went outside at different times of the day and traced our shadows with chalk. Each time, we noticed how much our shadows moved based on the sun's position.. We also had a fun game of shadow tag! For a homework pass, ask your child these two questions and let me know if he/she answers correctly!
*What do you need to create a shadow? (a light source and a solid object)
*What does your shadow look like in the morning and noon? (longer in the morning, shortest at noon) Check out our pictures! 

Another investigation we took part in was to use a model of the Earth and a flashlight to demonstrate the concept of sunrise and sunset. We also learned that the Earth rotates on an axis every 24 hours to create daylight and darkness. We also discovered while we are in daylight, the opposite hemisphere is in darkness. Students also used flashlights to reproduce the shadow movements to model how the Sun’s position in the sky changes during the day. Check out some pictures!

In math, we just finished multi digit division. This was a very difficult skill for the students to master, so we will continue to practice. We are now moving onto Chapter 5, adding and subtracting decimals. We start by rounding the decimals to get an idea of the concept, then we dive right in and add/subtract to the thousandths. Here are the anchor charts we will be using for this chapter.

In reading, our current focus is character study. We are examining and discussing how characters change throughout a story, using evidence to determine character traits, and classifying their archetype. We are still using SCAT as our mentor text and the students are also using Fish in a Tree and their group's novels to practice these skills. ​​

In writing, we are continuing with narrative writing. The students are working on publishing their second personal narrative and are including vivid verbs, show don't tell, transition words, sensory details and adding feelings and emotions. We are also working hard on our constructed responses using the RACE model. The students are becoming experts!

Thanks for reading -  we will update again soon!

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. 

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! 

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 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. 

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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.