Our Week in Review

The students completed their Informational Brochures.  They each chose a topic, researched it, and put together very creative and interesting brochures to share with their classmates.

The students did a wonderful job in finalizing the finished products.

 

 We have begun our research on Canada for International Night.

We will be reading about the Foods, Famous People, Provinces, History, Culture, Animals and Sports of Canada.

The students will put together posters, brochures, a cookbook, and some arts and crafts displays for all to view. 

Everyone seems very excited to be participating in the festivities. More information to come in the following weeks.














Our new display is up.  I LOVE reading to the children and each day you will find us in circle time with either myself or Miss Lopez (our student teacher) reading to the children.  Once we complete the book, we have wonderful discussions about the lesson or theme of the book and then we place the copy of the cover on the line.  My goal is to reach our 180th day and have read to them one book per day.  So far we have over 80 books displayed.  This weekend I went out and bought more books to add to my collection of read alouds.  I can't wait to share them with the students.

Our 5th graders are continuing with their latest project: Different Perspectives.  They have chosen two articles to read with various views on particular topics.

On any given day,  the children get out their chrome books and begin work on the project.  There are groups that work together and help each other along, others may prefer to work alone.  It is all a matter of choice and how they like to learn.  They are making discoveries in their own way.  Project based learning is a way for students to learn about something in a variety of ways.  We may start off with a mini lesson with the entire group or they jump right in.  I am there to guide them and make sure that they are understanding what is expected of them.

Coming up:

Friday, February 1st is World Read Out Loud Day.

Our literacy team is planning some great activities to do with the children. Reading to a child is one of my favorite things to do.  As I read I can see that the children hang on every word and are attentive to what is coming next.  

Enjoy the week!!

                                                            A Week of Learning
Fourth graders at work:

 The fourth graders are continuing their work on Informational Writing.  They are working on creating a brochure filled with facts about the topic they read about.


The children researched the topic by using books and the internet.  After they gathered the required information, they planned out what their brochure would include.

 The children gathered and organized what they wanted to
include and spent a few days putting it together.  The next step is to finalize what they would like their brochure to look like and begin to put it all together.

Many of the students collaborated with one another within their groups and took advice from their peers on how to set it all up.  The children were able to choose the topic they were interested in.  It's all about voice and choice.

Our Writer's Workshop is allowing for the students to have a choice in what they would like to read and write about.  It allows them to make choices about what they want to explore.

 Reading out loud to children is one of my favorite things to do during the day.

Our book a day board is filling up quickly with all of the books that have been read.  My goal is to get 180 books read. 

This week we welcomed our student teacher to my classroom.
Miss Lopez comes to us from Providence College and will be with us until April.

She has already dived right in and is following 4Z students to all of their classes.  The children have begun to develop a nice rapport with her.

 

Fifth graders have dived right in with their 2nd project of the year.  They are reading articles and holding discussions about different points of view.  Once they read the articles they choose a side and discuss the pros and cons of each topic.
There were some great discussions going on in the groups.

Here you can see how they are in groups and discussing the pros and cons of self driving cars. 


As I walked around the room, it was great hearing the reasons why they should or should not have cars drive themselves. I found that by taking a stand, they were vocal about their opinions and defended their choice.

Here, the students are discussing why they should offer school children healthy lunches. 
The children were able to defend their stand based on details from the article they read.

 On Friday the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders spent the day at Brown University watching the women's basketball team play against Yale.  There were lots of happy faces and so many of them enjoyed watching the game. 



The children loved holding up the sign. There was lots of cheering and dancing in the stands. 

Congratulations to the team for their win!

I hope that everyone enjoys the long weekend, even though the weather isn't that great. 

Thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, for his fight for equal rights, we are all allowed the rights that make America what it is, a land of opportunity for all. 

Project Time=People Time

 Who doesn't love a great Project?

 The students are all working on the Informational Writing piece for this Trimester.  They have all chosen a topic that they want to learn more about and are researching and taking notes.

Once they chose their topic, we came together at the easel to go over what needed to be done.  The anchor chart will organize them while doing the research. 

We had some great discussions about what they needed to do and how they will put it all together.  We are now in the process of taking notes and deciding how our brochures will be organized.

 The children are eager to get this started.
The buzz in the room, among them, shows that they are enthusiastic about the topic they chose and can't wait to do their final product.  Before that can happen, we discussed that there's a process we go through.  Reading about their topic is first, along with taking notes and writing down the facts.

 You can see how engaged the students are.

 

 The children have been busy reading and looking up information.  This will continue this week.  Once the information is gathered, they will think about the layout of the brochure. 




Stay tuned for more of their progress...

 The question of the day is now on Google Classroom.  The children take 5-10 minutes responding to the question.  Once they respond they submit it in to me.  I enjoy reading their answers.  I can keep track of who is submitting and who isn't. 

Before submitting, they must check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  They can refer to dictionary.com for spelling and the anchor chart below for capitalization. 

It seems to be working out nicely and they are more settled in their learning process.

 

 Our 5th graders have begun their next Summit Project: Different Perspectives.  We all have our views and how we see things.  This project will have them involved with reading different topics and seeing where people stand.  They will see pros and cons of certain topics and will get to interview classmates on their views.  This week they were introduced to the vocabulary and filled out a vocabulary sheet right online.
The students work together and help each other out.  I love to see them helping each other, especially with technology.  There are some real experts in the class.

When we work together, we can accomplish great things.  The students are always willing to help out a classmate who is "stuck", or can't find what they are looking for.  It's great to see the cooperation among them.  

Enjoy your week, everyone!!!

                      Can you believe that we are in 2019?  I hope everyone enjoyed the Holidays.  Now that the new year has begun, my intention is to start setting new goals for myself.  Every year I set out to accomplish my goals, and this year is no different.  The past month and a half I have had a lot of time to sit and reflect on what changes I need to make.  I have decided that my health is very important so I am going to work on eating healthier, exercising and take better care of myself (#selfcare).  I know we all start strong with our resolutions each year, but this year I am determined to do what I have set out to do.

                                                                   Fourth Grade News
First off I would like to say that I am so glad to be back in my classroom.  Being out for awhile I truly missed the students, the faculty and staff.  Now that I am back, things hopefully will get back on track.  It was a short week, therefore, everyone was able to ease back into our routine.

We are still reading James and the Giant Peach.
The children have been enjoying the book and many
great discussions are taking place.

We will be finishing up this week and move onto their
culminating project.

I also sent home this trimester's book project.  It is:
A New Cereal on the Shelf.  After reading their book,
the children will create a cereal based on what the book was
about.

The picture below gives you an idea of what the final
product will look like.  The handout I sent home explains
how to set it all up.  These will be due on March 15th.

Our writing in the next few weeks will be informational pieces.  The children will learn more about topics of their choice and some that I have already chosen.  We use Lucy Calkin's Units of Study as the foundation for our writing.  The children have Writer's Notebooks and take part in sacred writing time in which all we do is write. Our pencils do the talking during this time and is uninterrupted time.

These are some of the books the books that the children listened to during read aloud time for our #bookaday.  This month's theme is about Snow and Wintry Weather.

Fifth Grade News

The students have been introduced to their next Summit Project.  It is titled Different Perspectives.  I briefly discussed what will be involved and the students will dive in this week.  I opened up the lesson by showing them the image below.

 They were asked to study the image and think about what they saw.  After a while we opened up the discussion with what each one saw.  Most of the children saw a young woman and a few say an older woman.  What do you see?  I explained to the students that even though it is the same image, people see things differently.  The project includes learning vocabulary words, reading articles and watching videos.  All of this will lead to then conducting an interview with classmates about different views on where they stand on a particular topic.  

The children will also continue to read Crash.  We should be

done with it in the next week or so.  I will be alternating days with

reading the book and working on the Summit Platform.