January 6, 2017

We are off to a great start this year.  Students made stunningly gorgeous hands with resolutions for the New Year written on them.  Take a look at them when you are in the building.  You will be amazed!  Also, the bridges unit is in full swing.  Many groups are beginning to construct their truss bridge.  Students were writing checks for their supplies, hoping to not exceed their $1,550.000.00 budget.  After supplies were purchased, the sawing and snipping began.  A couple of groups have started to glue the trusses.  It is amazing to see them take shape!  Enjoy the hand and bridges photos below.

BRIDGES!

Great class photo in front of our gorgeous State House after a walk around Montpelier looking at bridges.

                               

                   A new puppy came to visit the classroom the other day!  Thanks Kim and Ava.

December 16, 2016

Dear Families,

     It has been very exciting in the classrooms as students are building paper bridges.  It is mind boggling to think that a paper bridge made out of one piece of paper, 24 x 36, could hold 4 dictionaries.  But we had several that did.  The next challenge was to create a bridge using two pieces of the 24 x 36 paper, being mindful to incorporate what was observed during the testing of the first challenge.  It seems triangles were a huge part of successful bridges.  We will be testing our 2^nd challenge paper bridges this afternoon. 

Important Person in History Information Project:  This week, students were assigned a three part project based on a person in history who made a huge impact on the world.  Students will be writing an information piece on that person.  This will be done in class.  We will be talking about how to use information text features, write a powerful introduction, and a satisfying conclusion, but the most important skill for students to work on is putting information into their own words.  Students will be working on reading information text about the person, summarizing, and making sure they are not plagiarizing.  The second component is to create a poster board presentation of the person.  I will provide the poster board.  This presentation will accompany them as they dress up as their person, the third component, and “become” the person.  They will be knowledgeable about the person’s life and be able to explain what contribution or impact they had on the world, in addition to talking about the person’s life.  We will have an evening of sharing on Wednesday, February 22^nd, 2017.   This will also be a Celebration of Learning for the entire school.  More details on that later, but please save the date.  Students were given a scoring rubric for this project.  A copy of the rubric was emailed to you all today.  

The sun is out right now, the shadows are long, but the shortest day of the year is just around the corner.  After that, the days begin to get longer. 

Stay warm,  Ellen 

Classroom Updates

COMING SOON!  Next week students will be assigned an independent book project.  It is called the 12 of 18.  All students were to complete reading a book by the second week of October to use for this independent book project.  More coming next week! Stay tuned!

Everyone is working very hard on the island project.  Very impressive!  The most important bit of advice is for students to follow the rubric.  I have extra copies of the assignment and rubric, if needed. Most students have completed defining the 29 terms, which are due October 11th,  and are now designing their islands. The project is due October 21st. The creative juices are flowing.

In writing, students took a look at their narrative pre-assessment score so they could see where to specifically improve their writing.  This week we focused on punctuating dialogue and adding interesting language.  A couple of areas that are challenging for students in the use of transition phrases to show the passage of time and elaboration.  Students are learning how to stretch out a small moment.

In grade 6 math, we are working on area and perimeter of rectangles and of triangles. I am looking forward to seeing the designs for the Mr. Trottle's dog fence.  We are also continuing our work on factors, multiples, multiplication and division.

If you have questions about grade 5 math, please contact your child's teacher or visit that teacher's blog.  

We finished our wonderful read aloud, Harris and Me.  The last chapter is always hard for me to read aloud, as I can feel the tears coming. An incredible book about a young boy, who finally learned what it means to have a place to call "home".

Sunrise/Sunset

Each Wednesday we track the time of the sunrise and the sunset in East Montpelier.  As you can see from the photos, the yellow, or daylight, is decreasing and the black, the darkness, is increasing.  We began tracking the sunrise/sunset times on September 7th.  Since then, we have lost 1 hour and 27 minutes of daylight.  Yikes!

Wondrous Words

Students looked the books they were reading to find new and interesting words.  We gave them a value.  Were the words worth 25 cents, 50 cents or $1.00?  We discussed how important it is to use interesting language in your writing to keep the reader reading.  After all, words are free.  No one owns them, so we can use them!

Personal Narrative Writing

 Students have been working diligently and looking critically at their narrative pre-assessment.  We have discussed how adjectives make your writing more interesting and transition phrases move your story along.  We also learned about inference.  We had a great time reading a small beginning of a story, thinking about what we could "infer" from the writing and then creating our own ending to the story.  Congratulations to those students who shared their work out loud.  It is a brave person who reads their writing out loud.  It is a risk, but we can't grow unless we take risks.