Only 5 Weeks Left!

Dear families,

I can't believe the school year is almost over! Despite the warming weather, 5th grade will continue working hard right up until the last day of school. We are in the home stretch and working on some exciting projects.

In math, we are culminating a year's worth of study with an integrated math and science project. Students are studying and measuring solar energy with daily science experiments to lead them towards the eventual design of their solar house. Please stop by on project night to take a look at their process and ask questions about what they've learned so far about solar energy. For more information about solar power, please visit http://www.need.org/solar. In addition to this project, students are reviewing the concepts taught this year -- particularly multiplication, division, and fraction operations.

Our final book of the year is Julius Caesar. Students will learn how to interpret Shakespearean language and study the plot development and historical implications of this classic. They will spend lots of time reading the text aloud and discussing in both formal Socratic Seminars and informal discussions, as well as completing quickwrites about their thinking.

As we approach the final days of the school year, students apply their research, writing, technology, and historical thinking skills to study a Civil War soldier. Students select a solider from online archives which have only recently become available. They then craft a short research paper (one or two pages) and a presentation for the class. All students will receive a copy of each other's research papers to compile into a folder, and they will leave 5th grade with a class book of everyone's soldier. For more complete information about the project, please read the assignment sheet here. 

As you can see, our work in 5th grade has become very integrated, with most assignments touching more than one subject. Learning across disciplines allows students to challenge themselves in multiple curricular areas at once and prepares them for 21st century life.

Field Trips, Assemblies, and Curriculum, Oh My!

Dear Families,

Spring Break is fast approaching, and we have exciting events on nearly a daily basis until then! Please review the updates here and email me if you have any questions. 

This Friday: Field Trip to the de Young museum

We will be visiting the Colonial and Revolutionary galleries to culminate our fall-winter American History curriculum. We will also look at some of the westward expansion and Civil War art to prepare for the final months of 5th grade. You may visit the de Young's education website here for more information. 

Next Friday: 5th Grade Assembly!

The 5th grade has been hard at work preparing for our next assembly. I will discuss costumes with the kids on Thursday, so please check in with your child to find out what they need to wear. As a general note, everyone but Maya, Mia, Lea, Ava, Erik, Miles, and Duncan will need to wear dress pants (black or khaki slacks). If you don't have any, please let me know so we can come up with an alternative plan. 

April 1st through 3rd: Sacramento!

Please check the Sacramento Master Doc for information on this field trip. It will be updated frequently prior to and during the trip. Please email me if you have any questions. 

Academics

In math, we are studying multiplication and division of fractions. The Common Core standards do not call for mastery of these concepts in 5th grade, but instead require building a strong foundation for future work. You can learn more about the standards here. For more information about the type of work we are doing, check here for an online tutorial. 

Soon, we will begin work on geometry concepts. Topics will include graphing ordered pairs on the coordinate plane, classification of polygons, and a review of volume. 

To merge reading, writing, and history, we are deeply engaged in the historical fiction novel My Brother Sam is Dead. We read about 2 chapters per week, and students respond to writing prompts (available online through google docs, though students may opt to write their answers by hand). Students are to state a main idea and support it with strong evidence from the text. Students have the opportunity to revise their work with teacher feedback and resubmit when necessary. 

After Sacramento, we’ll study the Constitutional Convention and students will write a brief persuasive essay to convince the constituents of their chosen state on the question of ratification. 

Math Unit 3 Family Letter

As we embark upon Bridges Unit 3, I thought you might like to see the family letter provided by the program. I am sending home a hard copy today, but here is a link to a digital version.

In addition, this unit in Number Corner is very vocabulary heavy, with lots of geometry and data collection terms. This might be a good month to check out the vocabulary app mentioned in the letter, or to simply review terms for quadrilaterals and graphing with your child.

NaNoWriMo Comes to a Close!

The month of November is almost over, and that brings an end to National Novel Writing Month. Though, of course, students are welcome to continue developing their stories for as long as they like, our word counting activities conclude on November 30. At then end of this post, please find information regarding instructions for "winning." This must be done by November 30th; I cannot help students with this process in December.

Is your child behind on his or her word count? Don't panic! Opportunities for writing abound, including two events at local libraries this week. The Albany public library is hosting a write-in this Tuesday, November 25, from 6-8pm. Details here. The West Branch of the Berkeley public library is hosting a long write-in this Saturday, from 10-5:30. Details here.  Though I hope to attend both of these events, I cannot be responsible for childcare.

In other news, this week students are completing their explorer presentations. I was impressed with their hard work, and the kids learned quite a bit about internet sources, citing their research, and collaboration as well as information about their explorer. They are ready to take on their next presentation on the American Colonies (information coming in December).

This week, we wrap up our work with fractions. Students used the clock, money, and number line models to explore adding fractions with unlike denominators, and have progressed to the Least Common Multiple (LCM) and Greatest Common Factor (GCF) strategies for adding, subtracting, and simplifying fractions. For extra practice over the long weekend, you may wish to check out these activities:

Fruit Shoot -- Greatest Common Factor

Fruit Shoot -- Least Common Multiple

Ordering and Comparing Fractions with Dick and Dom (this is a Monty Python style video game, with all the silliness that implies)

Fractions Jeopardy 

Preview our next unit with these activities:

Fraction/Decimal Memory

Math Tappers (for iOS)

I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Maureen

INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINNING NANOWRIMO:

Please read this entire section if your child is likely to meet his/her word count goal by Sunday, November 30, thereby "winning" NaNoWriMo, and particularly if you and your child would like to take advantage of the offer to get five printed copies of the completed novel for free (courtesy of
CreateSpace).

Since we don't have school during the last few days of NaNoWriMo, you'll need to take time with your child at home while you have access to the internet to validate your child's final word count. Writers must complete the word-count validation process before November 30 at 11:59 pm in order to be eligible to claim winners' prizes, including the free printed paperbacks. Please follow the steps below to validate your child's word count in order to claim winners' prizes:

(Adapted from http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/how-to-win)

Step 1:
Have your child log into his/her ywp.nanowrimo.org account and go to "Edit Novel Info." (They have done this at least once in class, so it should be familiar.) If your child plans to continue working through November 30, be sure you've updated your time zone. We want the students to have all the
noveling hours they need. Students can update their time zone on the User Settings page.

Step 2:

If your child hand-wrote his/her novel, he/she needs to "validate" his/her word-count by pasting in randomly-generated text that is the same number of words as his/her final, "winning" word-count. (The randomly-generated text is simply a proxy to represent the number of words your child has written.) Go to http://www.lipsum.com to generate the correct amount of random text, then
copy and paste it into the validator on the "Edit Novel Info" page. Please note that the method for validating handwritten novels requires that students count accurately and report honestly in order to come up with the correct amount of randomly-generated text.

Step 3:  Publishing!

Once you have submitted your child's final validated word count by following the step above, you will be eligible for the free publishing offer. Passwords for the publishing offer will be available in
early December. Look for a coupon code on the winner's page of your child's account and follow instructions from there. More info on the offer is available here: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/node/619879

Important note: To claim this publishing offer, your child will have to type (or dictate) his or her novel sometime during the coming months (the offer is valid until June 30). He/she is free to revise and edit his/her novel while transcribing it. When looking at (or later typing) your child's work, please remember that he/she "put away" his/her "inner editor" during the process! The novel is
likely to ramble and have many grammatical and other kinds of errors. It might not even make sense. Please honor the great accomplishment of sticking to the task and writing all those words over the course of the month. It is a formidable task and valuable experience no matter the quality of the finished product.

Haunted House and Parent Education Night

Halloween is almost here! We are in the planning stages for our haunted house, and will finalize our plans early next week. We do not have access to the music room until after 3pm on Thursday, October 30th, so I am looking for volunteers to help me put our plan into action. Parents, please email me if your child can stay after school to build the Haunted House. Until we are finished, they will not get signed into aftercare. Parents are invited to help, too! I imagine it will take a couple of hours to complete the project, though I am unable to give an exact completion time. 

In other news, a parent education night is coming up! Many of you have expressed to me that you would like to learn more about BPC's math program. To this end, we are offering a parent education event for Lower School parents on Thursday, October 30. Math Explored with Vera Balarin, BPC Math Specialist, 7:00 - 8:30 pm, Library. I hope you can come!

5th Grade Happenings

Today our buddies performed their dress rehearsal! Enjoy these buddy and sibling photos from after the show. The 5th graders were a great audience. 

Fifth grade is a busy place these days! As students become more comfortable with 5th grade expectations and routines become, well, routine, we are moving along through the curriculum at a faster clip. Here are some curricular highlights:

History: Students are wrapping up investigations into what life was like in the Americas, Europe, and West Africa prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas. Students are learning that each continent supported thriving cultures, and will thus have context for when these regions become intertwined during the period of European exploration. Next week we will explore Columbus's voyages, and the following week we will begin new research projects on European explorers. Detailed assignment sheets will be available on paper and posted to the blog once the projects are announced. 

Math: We are looking at contexts for adding fractions with unlike denominators. Specifically, we are using money and clocks to provide an easy way to determine fractional amounts. For example, students can look at a clock and see that one third of an hour is 20 minutes, and then can add one third to one half (30 minutes) to easily see an answer of 50 minutes, or 5/6 of an hour. 

For resources, check out this interactive clock model or this blog post about our curriculum's methods. 

Reading: We are reading Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Headless Cupid together, enjoying discussions as well as analyzing the author's technique for inspiration for our own novels. Ask your child about Amanda, David, Janie, Blair, and Tesser!

Writing: We are writing brief pieces analyzing Ms. Snyder's technique, as well as preparing for our upcoming novel, in a more traditional way. Students work in their NaNo workbooks at their own pace and some are storyboarding key scenes in their novel for inspiration. Excitement is building! In the coming weeks, we will discuss typing versus handwriting and select a way to enable our best writing come November. 

Join us for the NaNoWriMo Kickoff party. Check out the flyer here.

Link to Math Activity

Today Ms. Duncan showed me a great activity that supports this month's Number Corner, and we played around with it as a class for a few minutes. Many of the kids wanted to check it out themselves, so here's the link: http://www.fi.uu.nl/toepassingen/00247/toepassing_wisweb.en.html