Short Busy Week!

    This week may have only had three school days in it but it has been very busy!  We have had four speakers this week and have been finishing up our Three Branches of Government part of our current PBL project.  The students have done a great job listening and asking questions and all of our speakers have been very complimentary! The students have learned about the election process and about a lot of different jobs.  At the end of the day today our entire school will be able to participate in a Skype call from Shaqulle O'Neal.  We had a Riverside 6th grader who wrote him a letter and from there it evolved into this unique opportunity.  The kids are so excited and so are we!

      Next week will be equally crazy with fire safety, explorations and our next step in our PBL project!  It should be fun.  We hope this kids get some rest over Fall Break and are ready for a very busy week next week!

 Secretary of State Lawson via Skype

 Listening to our County Assessor Debbie Dunning

 Our Marshall County Clerk Julie Fox showing how a voting machine works

 Mrs. Fox talking to our kids

Attorney Rick Huff talking with our students.

October 15-19th--BUSY WEEK

     This was another very busy week for Team Hyper-Space!  Our groups have been working on our latest PBL project dealing with the three branches of government.  Our groups have been experiencing some different issues as this has been a different project.  We are all working together to make sure that they all get their issues solved in the best possible way.  A big part of PBL is learning to work with all sorts of different types of groups.  We have really appreciated the patience of most of the students.  Some are learning to delegate to others and some are learning to be more organized.  It is a work in progress.
    Next week is parent teacher conference week.  Students are invited and encouraged to attend so they can be part of this process.  The conference times are only 10 minutes, we will try to stay on task and get through as close to on time as we can.  Please let us know if you cannot attend or need to change times.  We would like to talk to each and every family. 
   Next week we will be Skyping with our Secretary of State on Monday and have a few other speakers in from local government.  We are excited about these opportunities.
    Fall break is next Thursday and Friday so we hope everyone can enjoy a little time off relaxing and getting ready to hit the second grading period following the three R's. . . . Respectful, Responsible and Ready to Learn.

PBL out in the Community.

This week we had four groups present at the Blueberry Board Meeting.  The kids did a great job and the room was packed.  We showed all of the students the final four projects and we talked about doing projects just to get done and doing our personal best on each and every project.  We want the kids to take pride in their work.  We had great response to this first project and we have some things we will do differently next time but all in all it was a big success.

 The entire group while Mrs. Dennie explains our project.

 Toleman, Kaylen and Gracie presenting their iMovie

 Olive, Adam and Grace presenting their Keynote.

 Carly, Lauren and Analee presenting their brochure.

Adam, Griffin and Carlie presenting their commercial.

Here is a link to the post about our project on the school corporation's PBL Blog.
http://pcscpbl.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/riverside-fifth-grades-first-pbl-project/

Here is the link to Mrs. Hirschy's Blog post about our project from the school corporation's 180 days of learning.

http://pcsc180daysoflearning.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/riverside-project-based-learning/

This week we started working on our next PBL project dealing with the election.  We had our vice-presidential candidates answer questions that their classmates had written.  The candidates did a great job.  On Wednesday we voted and selected Griffin to be our team's candidate for the school election.  We will be working as a team to support Griffin in this process.  

Our candidates answering questions from Mr. Hunter.  

We are finishing up the grading period next week.  So AR point are due on Friday the 19th.  Computer carts were delivered this week as well so unless students have homework computers will stay at school over the weekends.  Please help your child remember to bring their chargers to school.  

Have a great weekend. 

October is Here!

Well, ready or not October is here!  We are winding down the first grading period.  The students have been working hard at getting their AR goals!  To be able to attend the Riverside Roster party students have to have their AR goal and have one of the following, perfect attendance, all 3's and 4's on their report card or all homework done this quarter.  The roster parties are a fun time so we do not want anyone to miss out.  AR deadline is October 19th. 

My Big Campus is a place where some of us are posting things for our kids to access for our classes.  This is not a "Facebook" for kids.  We have been discussing this with our classes.  Students need to make sure what they are posting is realavant to school.  Things they are posting are filtered through Lightspeed  and we also have a person on staff who is addressing these issues.  We ask that you also talk to your student about making sure what they post is school related.  Along that same line please as a parent check what social media your child is using.  Students are posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter quite often.  Most of the time they are innocent and fun but sometimes children of this age post things without thinking.  Earlier in September we had a week of Digital Citizenship here at Riverside and we discussed these things with the students.  We would just appreciate if you also have these discussions with your child. 

Next week we will be starting our next PBL project dealing with the election process.  Students will be either running or helping another student run for a class office.  We are also having someone from our team run for Vice-President of Riverside.  Today students put their names into a box if they were interested in running for this major office.  Students will be learning about the three branches of government and about the election process.  Look for more information to come!

Have a great weekend!