As this is being written we are in our last day of November. Wow, has this year flown so far. We are really enjoying working with these kids so much this year that the days and weeks are really flying by. As we get ready for the holiday season we want to let you know a few items.
*We had such a great response by our kids for the one family that we added a second family to adopt this Christmas. We thank all of you for your help with this. There are a few tags left if you still want to participate.
*Our team's will be performing in the Holiday Music program at 5:30 on December 18. Students need to be here by 5:15. ( a paper is coming home in the Monday folder with details)
* If your student has enjoyed working on the PBL projects and would like to continue next year please consider coming to one of the information meetings. The meeting here at Riverside is December 5 at 6:30. Some of our students will be here with some of their projects. Applications open on December 10th and there are only a certain number of openings at each grade level so if you want to make sure your student can be apart of this next year please go online and apply December 10. More information about this process will be given at the informational meetings.
*Rocket Night is December 6 and this is a night for all Riverside Students. This is not a family event this is just a time for Riverside kids to hang out and have some fun. The only cost is an item for the food pantry. Pizza, pop, and cookies will be available for purchase. (We could use a few more helpers if any of you would like to help (tdennie@plymouth.k12.in.us) and could use some more small wrapped candy bars for prizes)
*School get's out for winter break on December 21. We return to school January 7, 2013. The end of this grading period is January 17th. This is different then we have done in the past so we wanted to make sure you were aware.
In classes this week we have been working on fractions in math, our trade books in language arts, and our life cycle project with our critters in science. For social studies we have been working on Indians and continued that in our PBL work. We took an Acuity test in math and language arts this week as well.
We hope you have a great weekend and we are sure December will be a busy month and fly by as well!!!
Friday, November 30, 2012
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Short Week
Well, a day off we did not expect today due to fog. We hope this finds all of you safe and enjoying the extra long weekend. We planned on keeping all of the computers here at school for the weekend. Some of the students left them here but some had some items to finished and took them home. Please be sure students are keeping them in a safe place and charging them. The biggest misuse of computers is over breaks. We do not want our students who have their computers to be pulled in on Monday for inappropriate use over the holiday weekend. Remind students that the schools Gaggle system picks up inappropriate searches and it can lead to lose of computer privileges. Our team has had very few issues with this so far this year and we want to keep it that way! Thanks for your help.
Tuesday we had a guest speaker, Norm Rhoads. Mr. Rhoads is a Cherokee Indian. He brought some of his items to show the students and talked to them about the Indian way of life. He did a great job and the students enjoyed his information and were great listeners. He even sang a song for the students while playing his homemade drum. We will be digging into our next project after break.
Our team will be adopting a family for Christmas this year. More information will be coming home soon. Please if possible consider helping us make this Christmas brighter for another family. We are very thankful this Thanksgiving for our team and the students that we have this year. This is a great group (talkative at times but great) and we are so thankful for this as we are working on our real first year as a PBL team. Have a wonderful long weekend and a Happy Thanksgiving.
Tuesday we had a guest speaker, Norm Rhoads. Mr. Rhoads is a Cherokee Indian. He brought some of his items to show the students and talked to them about the Indian way of life. He did a great job and the students enjoyed his information and were great listeners. He even sang a song for the students while playing his homemade drum. We will be digging into our next project after break.
Our team will be adopting a family for Christmas this year. More information will be coming home soon. Please if possible consider helping us make this Christmas brighter for another family. We are very thankful this Thanksgiving for our team and the students that we have this year. This is a great group (talkative at times but great) and we are so thankful for this as we are working on our real first year as a PBL team. Have a wonderful long weekend and a Happy Thanksgiving.
Friday, November 16, 2012
November 12-16
This week we started out with a Veteran's Day program for the entire school. Our fifth grade choir sang and our own Andie Kizer had a solo and did a great job. Griffin Nate also did the slide show to honor our Veterans and it was very well done. We are so proud of our students and the things they are doing to help our school. Our students are making items for the announcements for Ecology club, basketball team, Digital Citizenship and they are writing posts for the school Blog. We are so proud of all of our students and the way they have taken many roles to help make our school great. We say every week how pleased we are with this bunch of kids. They may be chatty at times but they have great ideas and are fabulous workers.
We have been working on FRACTIONS like crazy this week in math. We are adding and subtracting them. We have used two different methods and one way works for some and one way for others. We will be testing on this next Wednesday. Then we will move on to multiplying and dividing them.
In science our lizards arrived and we are learning about them and the life cycle. We will be working with these creatures for the next few weeks. The students seem to really enjoy this and even with our PBL project focus being social studies based we will work time in every day to do something with these fun animals.
In language arts we have been working on our trade books. Students are working in small groups to do activities with these each day. We have also been working on other standards as we read these novels.
We kicked off our next PBL on Wednesday. Students will be researching different Native American groups. They will create a Keynote presentation, some sort of display with the housing used from these groups and an activity to go along with their group. The top groups will be invited to go to Washington Discovery Academy to present and do their activity with a class over at Washington. The kids are excited. They will be getting background material for the next few days in social studies and then we will get into groups to work on these projects.
So ends another successful week for Team Hyper Space. Have a great weekend.
We have been working on FRACTIONS like crazy this week in math. We are adding and subtracting them. We have used two different methods and one way works for some and one way for others. We will be testing on this next Wednesday. Then we will move on to multiplying and dividing them.
In science our lizards arrived and we are learning about them and the life cycle. We will be working with these creatures for the next few weeks. The students seem to really enjoy this and even with our PBL project focus being social studies based we will work time in every day to do something with these fun animals.
In language arts we have been working on our trade books. Students are working in small groups to do activities with these each day. We have also been working on other standards as we read these novels.
We kicked off our next PBL on Wednesday. Students will be researching different Native American groups. They will create a Keynote presentation, some sort of display with the housing used from these groups and an activity to go along with their group. The top groups will be invited to go to Washington Discovery Academy to present and do their activity with a class over at Washington. The kids are excited. They will be getting background material for the next few days in social studies and then we will get into groups to work on these projects.
So ends another successful week for Team Hyper Space. Have a great weekend.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Week of November 5-9
We went back to a "normal" schedule this week. We are working with fractions in math and will continue with this for the next 4 weeks. We will be adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing them. In science we will be starting our life cycle unit and the lizards have arrived. It is a fun unit and the kids will enjoy this process.
In language arts we started reading different trade books for each class. Ask your student about it! In social studies we wrapped up election week. Mr. Hunter was gone for three days so the students did some work from the old textbooks.
Next week we will be kicking off our next PBL project. This will be based around Native Americans. We are excited about beginning another project.
Speaking of PBL, we want you all to know that next year you will have to apply to be part of the PBL team. If your student has enjoyed the projects and you think you would like for them to continue this way of learning please watch for the application information. December 10th is the date that the applications are to go "live" online. More information will come home regarding this. Please if you have any questions let us know. This application process is for students going into 6th grade as well as students coming to 5th grade. So, if you know a 5th grader who you think might like learning this way please pass that information on to their parents.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, November 2, 2012
October 29-November 2 Update
This week we have had fire safety presentation from our local fire department. The students all got to visit the fire safety house and practice having a plan to get out of a burning house. This has been Red Ribbon Week as well and we have enjoyed the different dress up days as you will see in the photos. We have also just finished our first round of Explorations. The students each went to different classes at the end of the day Monday through Thursday and got to learn to do something different. Ask your child what his or her Exploration was this week! They seemed to be enjoying themselves.
We moved to our next part of our PBL Election project and the students were all given roles in the government of Team Hyper-Space. We worked on taking situations and determining if a law needed to be written due to the situation. The House of Representatives wrote the laws and the Senate either approved or sent them back for revision. If a law was approved then the Supreme Court got to look at the law and decide if it was Constitutional or not. If the law finally made it through our president then decided if he should approve or veto the law. Our executive branch, the president and his cabinet worked on a ten million dollar budget and that was quite an experience. The cabinet nearly had a heart attack when the legislature decided to send three million dollars in aid out east to help with Hurricane Sandy. They had to decide whether to go into debt more or to cut from their original ten million. Quite a challenge for this group but the did a great job. Ask your student about this experience. We are confident they will do well when asked about the three branches of government and how a bill becomes a law later in the year.
We used Face Time this morning to talk with State Senator Randy Head. He was impressed with our kids so much that he has invited any of them who would be interested in serving as a page for him in Indianapolis to contact his office. He said that normally students they have are in Jr. High but after talking with us he would love to have anyone who is interested from our group. He gave the students his number and said to contact his assistant Mike Brown at 317-232-9488. We spoke with Mrs. Hirschy and she said that students serving as a page are not counted absent from school on the day they serve. If you decide to pursue this please let Mr. Brown know your student is from Riverside and a fifth grader invited via Face Time. This is a cool opportunity for our students who are interested in learning more about our government.
We moved to our next part of our PBL Election project and the students were all given roles in the government of Team Hyper-Space. We worked on taking situations and determining if a law needed to be written due to the situation. The House of Representatives wrote the laws and the Senate either approved or sent them back for revision. If a law was approved then the Supreme Court got to look at the law and decide if it was Constitutional or not. If the law finally made it through our president then decided if he should approve or veto the law. Our executive branch, the president and his cabinet worked on a ten million dollar budget and that was quite an experience. The cabinet nearly had a heart attack when the legislature decided to send three million dollars in aid out east to help with Hurricane Sandy. They had to decide whether to go into debt more or to cut from their original ten million. Quite a challenge for this group but the did a great job. Ask your student about this experience. We are confident they will do well when asked about the three branches of government and how a bill becomes a law later in the year.
We used Face Time this morning to talk with State Senator Randy Head. He was impressed with our kids so much that he has invited any of them who would be interested in serving as a page for him in Indianapolis to contact his office. He said that normally students they have are in Jr. High but after talking with us he would love to have anyone who is interested from our group. He gave the students his number and said to contact his assistant Mike Brown at 317-232-9488. We spoke with Mrs. Hirschy and she said that students serving as a page are not counted absent from school on the day they serve. If you decide to pursue this please let Mr. Brown know your student is from Riverside and a fifth grader invited via Face Time. This is a cool opportunity for our students who are interested in learning more about our government.
Shaq via Skype last Wednesday. Such a cool experience.
Some of our Judicial Branch presenting.
Some Legislative posters
Executive Branch
More Executive Branch
We lined the hall with our awesome posters on the three branches of government.
Our House of Representatives
Mr. Hunter talking to Senator Randy Head via Face Time
Senator Head via Face Time
Our Secretary of State, President and Vice President
Our Cabinet and Senate.
Have a great weekend!
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