Hi room 5 families! March is almost over and spring break is here! We have been busy exploring measurement, editing our teaching books, learning about the rainforest and practicing our social emotional skills with our 5th grade and high school buddies. Below are some highlights from the past two weeks. In math we are learning about measurement, why and how you measure something and the importance of being precise. Here we are working in pairs to measure a list of things around the classroom. In first grade we begin learning about measurement with non-standard tools (cubes, tiles, hands, feet) and eventually we learn to use standard tools (rulers etc.). The students were so excited to learn how measurement works they wanted to measure the length of the classroom! FYI it is 566 cubes long. We are also exploring the importance of choosing appropriate measuring tools. For example, below students decided which tool would be best to measure an object based on the size of the object. At home parents can support students by exploring lengths of objects at home. Students can measure with nonstandard items such as string or their hands. Follow up questions to ask are, "Which was the longest?" "Which was the shortest?" "How do you know?" "What tool do you think would be best to measure _______? Why?" In math we are continuing our exploration of word problems and finding new ways to solve the problems. He are two students sharing their strategies to the group. We love our high school buddies! Here we are practicing reading just right books with our buddies and then getting a chance to practice turn taking skills outside with our buddies. Last week at our school gathering the 5th graders introduced us to Bathroom Boss. Bathroom Boss likes to keep the school bathrooms clean so that everyone can have a clean and safe time in the bathroom. We can help by washing our hands after using the bathroom, throwing trash in the trash bins and keeping a volume one on the bathroom if we need to give a message. In FUNdations we learned about the glued sounds ang, ong, ing, ung. Glued sounds are letters that make their individual sounds but are stuck together. When students tap out a glued sounds they tap down the same number of finger as there are glued letters for the sound. For example in the word song, s gets one finger tape and the ong gets three finger tap at the same time. Parents at home and point out these sounds when reading and ask, what letters make that sound? In writing parents can encourage their child if they hear and glued sounds that might help them write the word. We learned a poem about the rainforest! The teacher reads the orange part and the students read the purple part. Have fun reading the poem together at home! We had a very special visit from a chocolatier from Nibble Chocolate. We learned about the different tastes that chocolate can have depending on the recipe. We go to see pictures of where this particular chocolatier grows their cacao and we even got to learn about recipes that we are going to try in class. Parents can ask their child, "What is chocolate made from?" "What type of tools does a chocolatier use to make chocolate?" "What is the main ingredient in chocolate?"
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Hello room 5 families! Below are some things that we have been exploring in room 5. Ms. Dorrance taught us another tool to help us problem solve with peers. It's called Bugs and Wishes! As a class we came up with a list of things that bug us at school. Then we came up with a wish that we would want to happen when this bug occurred. We also learned to use the sentence stem "It bugs me when___________. I wish people would _________________." This tool helps students advocate for themselves and also think about things they are able to solve on their own and what types of things they need to get a teacher to help them with. Here we are during a math discussion. A student is sharing her strategy while other students are listening to see if they understand what she did, if they can make connections to any of the strategies that were used, and if it makes sense to them. The students who are listening get an opportunity to ask clarifying questions and also ask for more details from the student who is sharing. Our math discussions serve as an opportunity to build critical speaking and listening skills as well as tools to back up our own thinking and reasoning. The role of the teaching during this part of the lesson is to facilitate the conversation and guide the thinking rather then tell students what the answer should be and show one way to solve a problem. At homes parents can support students inquiry process by asking, " How did you know to subtract/add that number?" In writers' workshop we are busy editing our teaching books to add to the classroom library. Each student has selected a teaching book that they were excited to write and are now editing their writing to eventually turn it into a book for others to read in the classroom. Ms. Dorrance has also taught us about using our five senses when writing to really help our readers feel as thought the book is happening right there in front of them in real life. Thank you to all who helped to make our zoo scavenger hung a success! The students have been excited to use all of the things they saw and learned about rain forest animals and plants to their project.
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AuthorWe are authors, writers, mathematicians, readers, scientists and artists. Mrs. Salamanca will email you to check our class blog when there are new updates. Archives
May 2019
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