10.31.2010

Fall Party 2010

We had a great time!

There were some great costumes displayed in our parade around the school.

We played a Halloween bingo game.

We had a yummy snack.

It's fun to take a break from our busy school day to celebrate Halloween!

10.11.2010

Math Unit 2

These past few weeks the students have been hard at work learning about estimation and computation in math class. This unit is a review for most students, but also covers quite a few of our districts gold standards. At this point, students should be able to add, subtract, and multiply multi-digit whole numbers and decimals. Please contact me if you feel your child is struggling with this expectation at home. I do a variety of groupings during class and notice that most of the students are able to meet this expectation in the classroom. We will be having an end of the unit test early next week. This test will also cover estimation, chance events, and converting lengths using a map scale.

We have also been continuing with our basic facts tests. In fifth grade, students need to answer 50 problems in 2 1/2 minutes. We require students to pass two addition, two subtraction, two multiplication, and two division facts tests before the end of the school year. I emphasized in class today that the quicker the students master their facts the easier the daily math work and assignments will be. Please help your student with his/her basic facts by quizzing him/her in the car, at the kitchen table with flashcards, or by using a game found on the Internet.

Thank you! Have a great week!!

9.30.2010

Fall Picnic

The fall picnic is tonight at 5:30. I hope to see you there!

9.25.2010

Welcome!

Wow . . . I cannot believe that it is almost the end of September already! So much as taken place in the first few weeks of school. The students are doing an amazing job getting to know each other again and learning to work cooperatively with each other. I am so proud of how they come together during our morning meeting everyday to greet, play, share, listen and learn more about each other. This part of our morning follows the philosophy of Responsive Classroom, which promotes community building within the classroom and school.

We've been hard at work with our Everyday Math curriculum. Students have been studying Number Theories and discussing factors, divisibility rules, prime vs. composite numbers, prime factorization, square numbers and square roots. In each of my lessons, I try to teach problem solving and promote good thinking.

Reading class has been full of reading new stories, learning new spelling words, using proper sentence structure, finding new ways to expand our vocabulary, and informative discussions about what we have been reading. We will be using many strategies this year to improve our reading comprehension, such as visualization, questioning, prediction, main idea, inferring, and summarizing. It is very helpful for you to ask your student about their reading. As they finish their independent reading each night or in the car on the way to an activity try to take the time to ask them questions about the book they are reading. Some questions to use are: Who are the characters in your book? What problems are the characters facing? What are some of the solutions to the characters problems? Is there a lesson the author is trying to teach you? When students are given the opportunity to talk about what they are reading greater comprehension takes place!


I feel fortunate to be your child's teacher. I appreciate your support and concern for your child's learning. I notice each morning when you have signed your child's planner. Please feel free to leave any notes for me with any concerns or questions. I also ask you to subscribe to this blog or add it to your "favorites" list. My hope is to update this often to keep you informed of what is happening in your child's classroom.