Important Dates & Reminders
*I will try to highlight new dates and information with red text.
May 6, 2014: Voting day - Please do not pack any peanut products in lunches as students will be eating in the classroom.
May 6, 2014: 3rd Grade Reading Ohio Achievement Assessment for all students. Please avoid appointments and absences.
May 7, 2014: 3rd Grade Mathematics Ohio Achievement Assessment for all students. Please avoid appointments and absences.
May 8, 2014: Parent Information Meeting for Girls On The Run program. Contact Ann Carmichael for more information on this great program at anncarmichael2@gmail.com
May 9, 2014: Students' Invention Convention problems due. (See below under science)
May 10, 2014: Windermere Wish Run for the Ugandan Water Project
You can register at https://www.premierraces.com/viewevent.asp?eventID=1054
May 12, 2014: InView assessment. Please avoid appointments and absences.
May 13 - 14, 2014: Terra Nova Reading and Language Arts and Mathematics Assessments. Please avoid appointments and absences.
May 14, 2014: Early Release at 1:15 for professional development
May 20, 21, and 22, 2014: We will eat in the classroom due to the 5th Grade Musical. Please do not pack any tree nuts or peanuts in student lunches.
May 21, 2014: All library materials are due. Please contact Mrs. Hastings at khastings@uaschools.org if you cannot find a lost library item so she can tell you the replacement cost.
May 23, 2014: Invention Convention Display Boards (or posters) due (see below under science)
May 26, 2014: No school: Memorial Day
June 2, 2014: Field Day
June 3, 2014: Field Day Rain Date
June 3, 2014: Invention Convention Prototypes due (see below under science)
June 4, 2014: Last day for students
June 5, 2014: Teacher Grading Day
What We Learned This Week
Word Study
We had a busy week in word study. We reviewed many key Common Core standards:
- Synonyms and antonyms
- Contractions
- Prefixes and Suffixes
- Subject and predicate
- Parts of speech (nouns, verbs and adjectives)
Reading
I continue to meet with students in individual reading groups and we focus on their individual reading goals and corresponding strategies. Many students have progressed to the role of playwright where they must choose a favorite scene from a recently completed chapter book and turn it into a play. They must create a character for their narrator who introduces the play and provides important background knowledge. They must then write dialogue for all of their characters. Playwrights type their plays and choose actors and finally present their play to the class after a few rehearsals which focus on projection and expression (in lieu of costumes, props and background).
We began our final research project for the year. Each student will use multiple sources to compare and contrast two animals across key research elements of:
- Classification
- Habitat
- Food web
- Adaptations
- Life cycle
Students must take notes using Venn diagrams for each of these areas. They will also use technology to complete their research.
Writing
Students are taking notes for their animal research projects and synthesizing them into their own words to produce a written report.
Math
Students reviewed data and measurement (pictographs, bar graphs, line plots, showing time on an analog clock). We also reviewed multiple strategies for determining area and perimeter. Finally, we worked on fractions. Students' ability to fluently work with fractions is dependent upon their mastery of multiplication and division facts. Students simplified fractions and converted improper fractions into mixed number fractions and vice versa.
Science
In conjunction with our animal research literacy study, we are exploring them in further through our life science study. Students will learn through hands-on lessons on each of the study areas: classification, habitat, food web, adaptations, and life cycle. Our research explorations will be driven by our essential question: "How do animals' adaptations help them survive in their habitat?" Students' understanding will be demonstrated with a "scranimal" (scrambled animal). They will be given a randomly determined habitat and will have to determine which of their two animals' adaptations would best serve them in their habitat to create a new animal.
All students will be participating in Windermere's Invention Convention. Students will identify a problem and will develop an invention to solve their problem. We viewed a slide show of problems and inventively simple solutions to get them thinking. Please help your student think about problems you routinely have at home or during family activities. This is the first page of your student's invention convention journal. These are due May 9th. There will not be any other homework next week. Hopefully students will enjoy this work. They should come up with three unrelated problems to give them plenty to work with the following week.
They will use technology to research their problem and solution. Students will complete a journal at school that documents their process from identifying their problem to building a prototype.
They will also be required to create a display board, due May 23rd. I will send home explicit directions on the minimum requirements for a display board or poster after students complete their journals. Display boards will be constructed at home as homework.
Students will build a representative (does not have to be a fully operational) prototype. These will be due on June 3rd. Prototypes must be no larger than a paper box (approximately 20" x 12" x 12") and may not use electricity (except for batteries). Prototypes will be constructed at home as homework.
