8.18.14 - Day THREE

It's a manic Monday, friends!  Hopefully you had a marvelous start to your week!  We got started on our regular schedule today and it is going to take lots of modeling, practice, repetition, and routine to get us on the right and steady track... because WHEW, it's a fast one and well, it's a DOOZY!  We don't have much time with all the subjects to squeeze in all of our content so I have been working with the students on coming into class and being prepared and ready to learn.  We will get there!

READING:

Today we discussed how reading is related to other subjects.  I gave each student 3 post-it notes and asked them to peruse their Science books and mark stories/ topics of interest to them.  We then used those post-its to create a bar graph and suddenly, we had our most hot topics of Science studies for the year!  It is really cool to see what interests the students most and how those interests fit into their personalities.  From there, we learned how reading is the center focus of everything we do in and outside of school.  It is a life-skill and everything builds upon it.

HOMEWORK: none :)

Here's our graph made of post-its.  The topics are labeled beneath them 

MATH:

Learning Target: I can represent how numbers are all around me.

We first brainstormed places we thought we used math in our daily lives.  Students were quite unsure at first, but we got started with measurements in baking/ cooking, telling time/ alarm clocks, measurements of weight and height at the doctor, etc.  I then explained to the students how their whole life is basically a series of numbers assigned to them (our birthdays, the date on the calendar, the time for any and every single thing we do [school, work, sports, etc.], when we were born, where we were born, social security numbers, etc.).  We then looked at the website: YOU'RE GETTING OLD (<--click on that!) and looked at how basically every single thing in our lives can be tied back to numbers and math in some capacity which is both fascinating and mind-boggling all in one!  The students then created a chart to display their lives "by the numbers".  It really is such a neat thing to think about how math centered our lives are and to put everything to a number. 

HOMEWORK: COMPLETE your "Life by the Numbers" activity

My life by the numbers example

WRITING/ LANGUAGE ARTS:

We are doing some "friendly" writing projects as we ease into more complex concepts.  We are reviewing the characteristics of writing a friendly letter and who our intended audiences are when writing specific pieces.  I wrote a friendly letter to the students and at the end, asked them to write one back to me.  We "dissected" the letter and looked at what made it friendly.  I hope the students will be writing more friendly letters in the future because I am having a blast reading them!  I mean, who doesn't love getting letters?!!!?

HOMEWORK: Until we start VOCABULARY next week, NONE!

some of our friendly letter "dissecting" from class

SCIENCE: 

HOMEWORK: Tape papers to Science notebook for Mrs. Schleg

SOCIAL STUDIES:

HOMEWORK: Study for Quiz

RELIGION:

HOMEWORK: Bring religious pictures for notebook.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• TOMORROW (Tuesday, August 19, 2014) is OUR Resource Day!!
• SMA Liturgy - Thursday, August 21, 2014 at 8:15a.m.
• Back to School Night for 5th grade is Thursday, August 21, 2014 at 6:30PM.  Please make plans to attend so we can go over important information from our class's syllabus and other miscellaneous notes.

Hope you have an EXCELLENT evening!  PS, have YOU signed onto Sycamore?!?  Please get on there and register yourself/ your student asap NOW!

xoxo,

Mrs. Thomas