The Unceasing River Roars Update 9/24/10

This past week, we have had some seat changes and we have started reading Novels for Literature Circles. We have changed our seating arrangement and adjustments will be made as appropriate. We have also started Literature Circles. Gruoup assignments were teacher driven and students chose books from 2-4 choices, depending on the group. Students are either reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson or Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. These books will be read at school and at home. The home component will start next week. Reading reflection and comprehension strategies have been and will continue to be taught through mini lessons and Literature Circle groups will meet about once a week for discussion. Students have Reading Journals and have begun writing in response to their Reading.

Book Buddies are here! Our class has partnered up with Mrs. Barnes's Kindergarten class for Book Buddies. As soon as I finish this Post, I will try and add some photos to the blog. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Progress reports went home on Tuesday and something unexpected presented itself, a number grade for Handwriting! Well, apparently, this will only show up on the progress report and will continue to be a letter grade on the report cards. I did enter letter grades on Grade Speed and it automatically converted. 90's are an E and 80's are an S.

Poetry Update-

We will be finishing up poetry this week with a culminating project of a poem on Story Board. Students have chosen pictures/images for each of their Story Board pages and we will finish on Friday.

Exhibition is coming! 5th grade teachers met on Thursday of this past week to plan Exhibition. We will begin the process of chosing topics this coming week. I know that many students are excited to get started. Updates and information will be forthcoming.

Math-
We have been focusing on Estimating and Rounding. For any students needing reminders of how to round, here is a poem:

Circle your number
Look next door
5 or greater
add one more

Numbers to the left
stay the same
Numbers to the right
Zero's your name!

Dear Parents,

Thank you for your warm reception at our Open House last night. I have met many of you of previous occasions and was happy to meet those of you whom I had not yet met. I also appreciate your patience in establishing regular communication and communication of grades.

In response to some of the questions from last night-
I talked with the students in class today about the routine for Wordly Wise that will start next week. One to two Wordly Wise lessons will be assigned each night (Monday-Thursday). Students will write which lessons are to be completed in their agenda's. We will review the homework/lesson the following morning and there will be a Wordly Wise Test each Friday.

I am going to work on a more consistent spelling assignment/s for homework and let you know sometime next week.

Grade Speed/Parent Connect is up and running. I have inputted grades for Language Arts, Social Studies, Math and Science. I will be entering more this weekend. I will enter grades at least once a week in the future (starting next week).

5th graders will all take the Naglieri (NNAT) on Tuesday, October the 26th.

Social Studies Update!

We will be finishing up US Geography next week with a culminating Test on Thursday of all the States. Some students who took the opportunity to take this test early and score a 90% or higher will be working on a state project in class instead of daily geography activities. Some good websites for students to practice US Geography are:

http://www.vectorkids.com/maps.htm

http://www.ipl.org/youth/stateknow/

Enjoy the long weekend! Carol Rivers

Homework
Reading- each week you will need to read a minimum of 150 minutes. Ideally, this will be 30 minutes a day. I know that some students have evening activities and with packed schedules, this is difficult to fit in at times. If students would like to read on the weekend in order to get in their reading time, that is fine. I will ask students to have parents sign their reading log once a week and I will check for parent signatures on Mondays.
Math- Although it is not currently an assignment, students can always practice multiplication tables. The faster students are, the easier it will be to find equivalents for fractions and perform conversions (fractions, decimals and percents).
More to be posted on Monday the 13th. See you then!
Ms. Rivers

Welcome!

Parents and Students,

Thank you for a great start to the new school year. The first three weeks have been great for getting to know all of the students and I have also had the opportunity to get to meet several parents as well. In building classroom community, the students of Ms. Rivers class have been working on designing a classroom seal. We started by studying the United States of America symbols, landmarks, monuments and the U.S. seal. The students created the classroom motto, "The River Unceasing Roars". Plans for the design include a phoenix flying out of a volcano with lava flowing down the side of the volcano and forming the infinity symbol. The phoenix will have the flags of countries represented in our classroom in its beak and wear a cape on its right wing. I have a wonderful group of students who have become a new classroom community.