Curriculum Forecast (aka Parents Night Information) Wonder IXL Conferences and Parent Questionnaire Hello all! It was such a pleasure getting to briefly catch up with you and share more detail about our 5th grade curriculum last night and Parent's Night. For those of you who we missed last night, the following information will summarize what you missed! In summary: -We use a program called Responsive Classroom to guide us as coaches to your children socially and emotionally. -Homework in 5th grade should be independent and will encourage students to stay organized, be accountable for their own learning, and work through challenging moments. Some assignments will be long term and others will be one night assignments. Homework should be challenging, not frustrating. If it is frustrating, have your child talk to me about it. -To prepare your child for middle school we stress self-advocacy skills, time management, and problem solving in all aspects. -We use Math In Focus, based on Singapore math, to guide our math curriculum. -We integrate with Sally Borden Program students when possible to allow students to work with a wider social group of peers with diverse strengths and passions. -We use Making Meaning, Being a Writer, and Note and Notice for teaching reading, writing, and literacy skills, which emphasizes strategies when approaching texts, rather than using a textbook. -Our vocabulary program is called Classical Roots, and it uses a Latin and Greek- roots based approach. We have quizzes every other Friday (or so), and kids are set up on an online interactive quiz system called Quizlet to study for this if they want. -In Social Studies we study parts of American history through an eyewitness viewpoint, paying attention to perspective throughout. We don't use a textbook, but rather rely on primary sources, articles, and non-fiction books. -Student work will be collected and organized in school in their porfolio binders. If you would like to check in on your child's work, feel free to come in and peek any time! (Don't worry, I will get in touch with you if needed.) -Conferences are coming up, and your child will lead the beginning portion of the conference! They will tell us about their goals, growing edges, and how they are feeling about 5th grade. This week in Math we finished our unit on rounding with an in-class assessment. We will move on to multiplication of large numbers next week. We also made some time this week for a deep dive into math games this week. We mixed-it-up and played Set in Mrs. HK's room, and then switched to playing the game 24 in my classroom. We love using games to reinforce math facts, encourage teamwork and healthy competition, and to simply build our math confidence. Above are photos of the kids playing the games! I am pleased to tell you that we will be using a website called IXL in our classroom this year. IXL is a comprehensive learning program offering unlimited math practice across thousands of skills—and it is easier to use than our previous program, Matholia! One of the best things about IXL is that your child can access it from home with ease, and I can check on student progress from my account. IXL is designed to help your child learn at his or her own pace. The program is adaptive and will adjust based on your child's demonstrated understanding of the material. All of your child's results will be saved, so you can monitor his or her progress anytime by clicking on Analytics. For on-the-go practice, you can download IXL’s free tablet apps for iPad, Android, or Kindle and sign in with your child’s username and password. I hope you'll encourage your son or daughter to use IXL regularly. Sometimes, we will complete IXL tasks for homework or classroom work. They will have their usernames and passwords written in their agendas soon! Today we had a technology presentation from Mr. Felix about internet safety and how to best protect ourselves when going online. The main takeaways were: -Whatever we put on the internet creates an online footprint -We should be wary of pop ups and anything that asks us for personal information online -We should ask an adult before downloading anything to our school computer, or any computer -Tech is a privilege and a tremendous responsibility Reminder: Please sign up for a conference time slot if you haven't already, and I thank you in advance for sending in the parent questionnaire forms by October 13.
Sincerely, Sarah
0 Comments
Outside the Classroom Day Writing: Personal Narratives Parents' Night/ Computer Use at Home Reading: Wonder Conference Sign Up- October 20 and Parent Questionnaire Our Outside the Classroom experience kicked off our week in the most exciting way! The students were thrilled to arrive to school on Monday morning to head right back outside to the basketball court. We began our morning with a couple of whole-grade games. These games emphasized teamwork and only could be "won" or completed through skillful group effort, rather than individual accomplishment. These games reminded us that though sports and athletic challenges can fuel our competitive sides, students must always focus on being team players first. In our afternoon session, we headed to the low elements on the FA ropes course. We broke into two groups and tried different challenges on suspended wire ropes and swinging ropes. New friendships were foraged, old ones reignited, and excellent teamwork was abound! The next morning students were given their Outside the Classroom journals, which stay with them through every OTC experience in 5th grade through 8th grade. They reflected on the previous days' experience, recalling the elements that challenged and excited them most. Later in the week we started our first creative writing assignment. Students are striving to capture a moment in time through a Personal Narrative piece. We are each working on drawing our readers in and truly zooming in on a moment, as if with a magnifying glass. I shared my own personal narrative with them, and it was a one-page essay on the moment I met my rescue dog, Mabel. We can't wait to share their own personal narratives with you this Thursday at Lower School Parents' Night. If you are unable to come to back to school night, we will need to schedule another time soon for you to come into school to sign our Acceptable Use Policy form regarding student laptops. Once this form is signed by parents, the 5th graders are allowed to take their MacBook Air laptops home to use for homework. The kids are eagerly awaiting this day, as you can imagine! They will be set up on Quizlet (online interactive study program) accounts this week for vocabulary and spelling lessons, so they will benefit from this home to school flexibility with the device in the very near future.
We continue to love the book Wonder. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the beginning of this book with this class, as they are so invested in the characters and the story. They feel so passionately the unfairness when one character is cruel to another. Each student has such trouble putting the book down when we pause to discuss. I have to make them put the book face-down and watch to make sure nobody reads ahead while we chat! I cannot wait to continue deeper into this literature unit and write about Wonder. Looking ahead.... I've posted a Conference Sign Up sheet outside our classroom door for parents to sign up for our first student-led conferences, which take places on October 20. If you don't have time to pop into school, feel free to email me to arrange a time. I'm happy to do this! I ask that parents answer the questions in the 5th Grade Parent Questionnaire by October 13 (you can send it into school in your child's trapper) so that I have some background information by the time we meet for conferences. You'll find this form in your email. At this conference your child will be present and begin by sharing their goals for the semester and year ahead. We will then have an opportunity to discuss without your child present, and childcare is provided at school throughout the day. As always, please contact me if you have any questions. I hope you enjoy your weekend, everyone! Best, Sarah Wonder Tissue Paper Self Portraits Mapping- Relative Location Wishing Stones Math Activities continued Outside the Classroom day- MONDAY This week we started reading one of my favorite books of all time, Wonder. Even though so many kids have read this book by fifth grade, it's messages and themes are crucial to fifth grade discussions. I can already see how this spectacular story of appearances, bravery, friendships, and challenges is resonating with my room full of passionate readers. Our discussions so far have been deep and meaningful, with students volunteering to read aloud and share connections to the story. As we continue reading the book, students will sometimes take the book home to read for homework, and other times we will read aloud together in class. I highly encourage you to read this book if you haven't already. My own mom read the book as I taught it two years ago and loved it. See the book trailer below (and feel free to show your kids since I haven't showed them yet) to get a sense of the story! In keeping with the theme of appearances and differences, we began making tissue paper "stained glass" self-portraits this week in our homeroom. Using transparency paper and assorted colors of tissue paper, we are striving to make accurate depictions of ourselves to hang in our beautiful windows for the whole year. When you come in for lower school parent's night, you will hopefully be able to find your child's self portrait easily! This project is almost a rite of passage in 5th grade, and we will be able to see them all year from our classroom and from the outside as we walk up the hill from recess. As the light shines into our classroom, the colors of the tissue paper will stream in. Below are photos of our portraits in progress. In Social Studies we have started discussing our course of action for the year ahead. In order to best prepare the kids for discussions about colonization, we begin the year by talking about mapping, and more importantly, relative location. We've been practicing describing things in the room by using north, south, east and west as descriptors. We played a movement game that involved relative direction as well, helping the students to get more comfortable using the language of direction. On Monday we started off our week with some reflective time. Using special wishing stones (a rock with a ring of color all the way around the stone) we walked to the river on campus and sat with our reflection journals on the grass. First, we sketched our stone, and held it to feel the weight. Then, we wrote down a wish we have. We tried to keep it meaningful, so the kids thought hard about what to write. Some wished for world peace, or less judgement in the world. Others wished for their homes and families to always be safe, or for animals to be treated better. At the end of our writing time, we all stood together at the river's edge and tossed our wishing stones into the water. In math class we have been studying divisibility rules of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10. This mini unit has been so helpful in reacquainting the students with math terms such as multiple, sum, and digit, and indirectly helping with times table practice. We joined with the other traditional FA class today to play a math game related to divisibility. Students in 5A were partnered with students in 5B and they were required to move around the two classrooms to find questions one through ten, and at each station they wrote statement sentences about the divisibility of the number on the card. Their teamwork and focus was on point! Next Monday September 18, fifth grade will have our Outside the Classroom day. We will spend nearly the whole day outside as a full grade, playing team building games and trying low elements on the ropes course. Students will need to come with plenty of water (multiple bottles may be helpful), sunscreen, layers of clothing, and sneakers. Athletic clothing is perfect! I recommend packing extra snacks for your kiddo as well. If possible, please send your child with a non-heat up lunch, so that we don't have to use a microwave and have the option to eat outside for snack and lunch. Thank you! I'm excited for our day outdoors and expect the kids to be fairly enthusiastic as well.
Enjoy your weekend everyone! Sarah
Welcome
Week of Inspirational Math Housekeeping Notes
Dear parents and 5A family members,
Welcome to our newsletter! On this website you can expect weekly updates from me. I will post a blog-style newsletter every weekend detailing what we did in the classroom during the week. There is also a "photos" page where I will add photos of your lovely kiddos and their peers. Take the time to explore the other pages here, with names and contact information for your child's art, music, PE, Spanish, and Science teachers as well. I recommend checking out our class website, and the Heads Up notes from Head of School, Ben Kennedy every week, so your family is aware of upcoming events, changes in the schedule, and general FA happenings.
The first week of school is now in our rearview mirror. Fifth graders eased their way back into school mode with plenty of team building and "getting to know you" activities. We also had extra outdoor time with the rest of the grade, reconnecting after time apart for summer break. We devoted time to relearning routines, organizing our new cubbies and coat closets, and thinking about goal setting for the year ahead. We are going to WORK HARD and PLAY HARD this year, and we spoke a lot about what it means to be the oldest students in the lower school. We discussed what it means to have professional relationships in our classroom, and we had our fair share of giggles too.
For the first week of school, lower school teachers are encouraged to explore activities from Stamford University's Week of Inspirational Math program. This innovative and data-backed program is designed to "inspire math success for all students through growth mindsets and innovative teaching." This program emphasizes first and foremost, that math is for everyone. Nobody has a "math brain", and all you need to do to become a mathematician is try, fail, learn, grow, and try again. This program speaks to me on many levels! First, it brings up growth mindset. If students believe their talents can be developed through hard work, solid strategies, and input from others, they have a growth mindset. They achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset. These are the students who believe their success is due to an innate talent. The second reason I love this program is because I wish these messages were available to me as a young math student. I fell victim to the popular message that kids were either good or bad at math, and I was sure I was especially bad. I thought that I should just focus my efforts on reading and writing, because those were my strengths. Through videos, exciting activities, and challenging hands-on games, students are encouraged to use this WIM program to rediscover a curiosity, passion, and comfort with failure in mathematics. One of the activities we loved was called "one cut geometry". The goal is to create 2-D geometrical shapes by cutting them out of a folded piece of paper with just one cut. It was quite challenging! Students were mixed up and regrouped in one of the three fifth grade classrooms, and though they were working independently on their own triangle one-cut challenge, they were encouraged to use peers as well.
They were given one clue. FOLD. Their tools: the piece of paper, a pencil, and a ruler. Later, they were allowed to use scissors. Here are some action shots!
,While these mathematicians worked, I jotted down what I heard them saying.
"This is impossible!" "Are you sure this can be done?!" "I am so confused." "I think I am getting close!" "Can I hold it up to the window? Can I trace the triangle on the back of the paper?" "What the heck!" The last part of our full-grade lesson was a discussion about the solution. We didn't show one! Students struggled and cut, folded and refolded their papers. No one-cut was perfect, though we had some near perfect attempts. And yes, the teachers did test it before class, and yes it is possible! We encourage the kids to try it at home with you. Perhaps next week we will try again and complete the task fully. The activity showed us that failure is progress, struggle is okay, working together gets us closer to success than working alone, and anyone can be a math student. Housekeeping Notes -5th and 6th grade play auditions and practices begin this Monday after school. -School is closed Thursday, September 21 -Lower school parents night is September 28 from 6:00-7:30 Please feel free to contact me at any time via email to check in. I look forward to getting to know your children more, and feel that it is a privilege to spend so much time with them every day. Enjoy your weekend! Best, Sarah |