Fall Break Week

    We hope that you enjoyed having your children home for a few extra days for our Fall Break!  We were very pleased with our turn out for parent/teacher/student conferences at the beginning of the week.  Thanks to all of you who made the effort to come and meet with us.  We are excited to work with your children and you as well. 
     This week was short but we did get some work done!  We had the portable star lab on Monday and Tuesday and the students enjoyed getting to check this out with Ms. VanDerWeele.  This was the finishing part of our science for this unit.  Student have all of the answers to their Needs to Know for our project.  We are excited to see what they have for us this week during our presentations. 
     The groups have really been working hard this week on their projects.  This coming week our students will be presenting their final projects on Friday.  If you are interested in coming in to see the students present please let one of us know.  The presentations will be Friday, November 1, we will be starting at 1:00.  The groups will be split up between three rooms so each room will see 8-9 presentations.  We would love to have you come if you are available. 
     In math class we started working on fractions.  This will be a long unit as it is a major focus in the fifth grade standards.  We still want to encourage the students to practice their math facts whenever they can!  This will help them so much as we go along in class. 
     Have a great week!

Star Lab

 Work time

October 14-18

    Well, the weather has changed and it is starting to feel like fall.  Students will be going out recess unless it is raining or the wind chill is below 15 degrees.  Please remind your student of this and help them to remember to dress appropriately to go outside in all temperatures. 
     We have had a busy week here in the fifth grade Innovation Academy!  We have been working in our new groups and they have been coming up with some great plans for this project.  We are excited to see the finished projects.  We have had some deadlines for benchmarks so far and students are working hard to meet these benchmark deadlines.  We are asking students to complete a reflection after each benchmark and you can access these in the Project Destination grade book on Echo if you are interested.  The grades for these will be moved to the appropriate subjects when the project is over as we wanted to keep them all in one place during the project.  So far, we have been very pleased.  We will be ready to present at the end of the week after fall break.  If you are interested in being a part of a panel please let us know.  We are looking for some adults to come and be our audience for these presentations. 
     We have finished the book the City of Ember and a lot of the students have already checked out the next book in the series!  Students have been very excited about this book and have even used the characters in math when writing story problems.  On another reading note, Riverside Reads charts and project/reviews were due on Friday and we had quite a few students who did not turn this in.  This not only does not allow them to attend the Riverside Roster party but it also went in as a grade in language arts.  We have been reminding them for weeks to get these done and in and we had quite a few that turned nothing in at all.  Students who at least turned in something are in much better shape.  This is a program that we will be doing all year.  Monday starts a new grading period so another Riverside Reads chart will be given an students need to complete it before the end of this second grading period.  Our advice is to start now and get as much of it done before Winter break.  Thanks for helping us with this. 
     This next week we will only have one Achieve 3000 article due since it is a short week.  Computers will be staying here for Fall Break so make sure to remind your student to bring in his/her charger. 
     In math, we have been working on reviewing skill from this grading period.  Students have been working at remembering what we have learned an applying it in their work.  We will be starting fractions this next week and continuing for quite a few weeks.  Students are still working on their facts.  Xtramath,org can be done at home and is a great practice.  Also, MobyMax.com has leveled math work and also Fact Master that can help those still struggling.  Thanks for any encouragement you can give. 
    We continued to work on the moon and shadows this past week.  This week we have the star lab coming so we will be looking at stars this week.  We will be finishing up science this next week and then going back to social studies. 
     We hope you have a great week and don't for get Parent/ Teacher / Student conferences are Monday and Tuesday.  Students are encouraged to attend. 

Playing a game called Footloose in math (review game!)

 Autumn gave Mr. Hunter a tie to celebrate the first day of Autumn!! (her face is on it!)

 Working on our latest project!

The Great American Shake Out - Earthquake Drill this week!

October 7-11

   Another busy week is in the books.  We have been working hard here at Riverside.  We continued to read our City of Ember books and have some great discussions on these books.  We got into new groups for our work on our project.  The students worked on group contacts together.  This is something new that we want to incorporate into all of our projects.  We are hoping this helps the students take ownership of their projects and helps make each member of the group accountable for their part of the project. 
    Our math classes have been working on finding Mean, Median, Mode and Range of data sets.  We still are working on multiplying and dividing.  Please help us encourage your children to work on their facts.
    Just a friendly reminder that Riverside Reads is due on Friday.  This is the reading program that is replacing AR.  Student have been working all quarter on reading four books at their level.  Ask to see their chart if they are still working on it.  A lot of students have already turned this in for this first quarter.  Also, please remember to help us out by asking your child about Achieve 3000.  The expectation is two articles each week completing all five steps. 
   Parent/Teacher/Student conferences are a week away.  Look for reminder notes with specific times coming home early this week. 
   On Wednesday there was a meeting here at Riverside and it was a question and answer session based mostly on Echo.  Here is a quick recap from the meeting:  

We discussed logging on to Echo with your username and password, if this had not been done already.  If you still cannot log in please send an email to the homeroom teacher and we can send it on so that you can use Echo.  

We were shown how to get rid of all of the email's when anything is put into Echo.  If you would like to do this go to My settings under the cog at the top right of your Echo homepage.  Click on My settings and then choose Notification Settings.  From there you can uncheck anything you do not want to be notified of.  You can check at your leisure without all of the emails. 

We looked at the grade book and discussed the 5 learning outcomes that your child is graded upon: Agency, (Responsibility) Collaboration, Oral Communication, Written Communication, and Knowledge and Thinking.

Some parents shared concerns that they were unable to see what aspects their child needed help with, when they were “struggling.” The Knowledge and Thinking portion of the grade book is more or less the portion that deals with mastery of common core standards.

If students have zeros in Agency, it means that they are not turning things in on time, or at all. The other 3 outcomes are pretty self-explanatory. Anything that is a task and is graded by one of the teachers, is sent back to the student. They should be bringing these home in either a binder or in their Monday folders.

We discussed “group contracts” and the procedures the learners take to create a contract within their groups. They make sure that everyone is accountable for “jobs” within the project and the group leader makes sure that these tasks are being followed. If they are not, learners can follow a procedure, set-up and agreed upon their group, to “fire” a member of the team, if necessary.

    If you have any questions please feel free to contact one of us about any of this and we will be glad to help you out to the best of our ability.

     Have a great week!  

   

October, Already??

   It is hard to believe that it is already the first week in October!  This first month and a half of school just flew by!  We have been working hard this week learning all we can for our latest project.  We have been reading the City of Ember in small groups and we have been learning about the sun, shadows and moon all to help us complete our projects.
     This week we went outside and traced our shadows at different times of the day to see how they change.  We had a video chat with Dr. Bolt from the Chicago Planetarium on Tuesday and that was outstanding.  He did a great job talking with us and answering lots of the students questions.  He showed us photos and artifacts that were very cool to see.  We hope we can talk with him again sometime.
     In fifth grade math this week we continued to work on multiplication and division.  We took a common assessment over these and students did fairly well.  Those having problems with these skills are struggling because they do not know their facts.  Quiz your child often as them more practice the better they will be at knowing their facts.  In advanced math we worked on mathematical properties and finding GCF and LCM's.  This was Miss Kunnen's last week as Mrs. Dennie's student teacher.  The students and Mrs. Dennie will miss her and the help she gave the kids. 
     In language arts small group, we work on comprehending The City of Ember by discussing and answering questions.  We also continued working on similes and metaphors.  Please remind your students that they need to complete two Achieve 3000 articles each week and two thought questions.  The goal is to have an average of 75% or higher on each of these activities on the first try.  These articles are at each students independent reading level.  Also, students should be reading at home each night and completing their Riverside Reads chart.   In science, we did a lot in our notebooks and outside on the sun and shadows this week.  We took a common assessment this week over the sun's movement. 
     We are having a parent informational meeting on Wednesday night, October 9th at 6:00pm for any parents who want to learn more about Echo.  We know there are questions that parents have and we would love to have you come and ask those and we will try to answer them.  The questions we can't answer we will find someone who can answer them for us.