Thanks to everyone who made cards or stories for our marvelous student teacher, Ms. Lick. Thanks too for the cookies, cupcakes and Capri Suns. She had a very hard time saying good-bye today. I don't blame her-we have a great group of kiddos in our class!
Today Kestrel Environmental Education came to our class to talk about how energy flows through our ecosystems. They talked our vernal pool specifically. Ask your child what organisms they observed, sketched and identified today. Our friends from Kestrel will be coming back to go to our vernal pool with us on May 8th. Thanks to Bev. Ed. for funding this for us.
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We all love a sweet treat. However, Valentines Day can be very tricky in 5th grade. Over the years we have devised a way to handle that. On Tuesday, we will have a coffee shop to showcase our name poems that we wrote with Mr. Green from Potato Hill Poetry. We could use some hot chocolate and fun treats to eat while we snap for our classmates.
Instead of valentines, we do an optional activity. The students who are interested, put their names in a bucket. We randomly draw names and keep it a secret. We create a special wordsearch for our person. We come up with 10 words to describe our person that we incorporate into the wordsearch. Then we decorate it and give it to our person next Tuesday. At that time we solve our wordsearches and see what words describe us. This takes a little detective work sometimes and some effort to make the wordsearch look neat and colorful. Tomorrow we'll introduce this to the entire 5th grade and hand out blank wordsearch templates. We may even get to pick names tomorrow! We had another visit from Change is SImple today. Be sure to ask your child what they did and what they learned. Hint: Water. The Change is Simple folks brought in an amazing model for the students to use to end their demonstration. A notice and worksheet also went home to further clarify the content from this morning.
Today Mrs. Brooks introduced our next Maker Space project. It is called "Geometry City". She and Mrs. Knowles have teamed up for this amazing project. Ask your child to show you the Padlet on their Google Classroom account. We still need cardboard in order to build our neighborhoods. Thanks to those of you who have already sent in boxes. Keep them coming!
What a day we had on Thursday! We took our fall walk to view the Vernal Pool. It was very exciting to see that there was actually some water in it this time. A great deal had changed. The students took pictures with the iPads to help them with their next writing assignment: "Diary of a Vernal Pool Invertebrate". They will follow the structure of the book "Diary of a Worm". They used their senses to really be able to describe the environment in which these creatures live.
We came back to the classroom where some very talented moms had transformed it into a coffee shop for us. The students presented their autumn/thankful themed poems while standing waaaaayyyy up on the heater or sitting in the "forbidden chair". Robert Frost seemed to be a favorite poet with this group. The original poems written by the students were impressive. Thanks to everyone who came by to listen and everyone who donated treats. In the afternoon we did a silent museum walk where the students viewed each mystery book project. They left a positive comment to the creator. The students expressed that they liked to see what their peers enjoyed about their project, and what they might change next time after having viewed their classmates' work. Next week on Thursday, 11/10 we'll be having our first "coffee shop" of the year. The fifth graders have chosen an autumn or thankful themed poem, or have written original poems to recite next Thursday. We will enjoy "coffee" (hot chocolate) and some treats while listening to our classmates present their poems. The students can bring in a mug to be stored here for the school year or use one of the very special mugs I have. :O) If anyone has an old tablecloth that they could donate, that would be great. If you're around next Thursday at 11:00, stop by to hear some amazing recitations. We'll do this approximately every other month. Thanks in advance for your donations and support. The students love these days! http://signupgenius.com/go/20f0e49afad22a4f94-november We also will view our October mystery book projects and walk to the vernal pool. What a day! You may have heard that I was not in school yesterday. I have been placed on a Grand Jury in Boston for 18 months. I will be out of school for most Wednesdays until October 2017. Mrs. Annie Barror will be my substitute on those Wednesdays. Annie is a former 5th grade teacher who used to teach at Cove School. She is very excited to get back to teaching by working with our class every week.
Next Friday, the 5th graders will be taking their first trip to the Cove School Vernal Pool. A permission slip will go home on Tuesday. Please sign and return it on Wednesday. There will also be a letter explaining how our monthly reading genre program works. That will need your signature as well. Finally, we are looking for someone to create a Sign Up Genius for the whole school year for our 5th grade school store. If you are willing and able, we would love some help! Thanks in advance. Have a great loooooong weekend with your families. Welcome back to school! We had a very busy first day today. What a great group we have this year. Please fill out the forms in the blue first day of school folder as soon as possible. There is a letter in there from me also. If you'd like a "September Chat" or would like to join my e-mail group, the information is in my letter. Have a great night, and please feel free to e-mail any questions or leave a question here. ([email protected])
Hi! I'm glad you found me! Please feel free to send me any questions you have. Hopefully you're enjoying your summer. I'll see you very soon.
Those of you who were able to sneak away from work or who were lucky enough not to be working today were treated to some amazing work by our fifth graders. All 59 students started off with something they've been wondering about ( How do tornadoes form? What are those QR codes? What is the history of soccer? Of Lacrosse? Of Skittles? Of the atom bomb? Of the automobile? How can you FEEL when someone is looking at you? Wolves versus dogs.) and they researched their topics. The written pieces and visual representations of their findings were amazing. Congratulations to everyone!
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AuthorMrs. Russo is a fifth grade teacher in Beverly, MA. Archives
March 2018
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