Is it Really November Already?

    November is here already and it is hard to believe!  We have had another busy week here in the fifth grade Innovation Academy at Riverside!  We kicked off our next project and are excited to be pairing with Mrs. Cooper's class from Washington Discovery Academy.  We are going to be learning about Native Americans and Explorers and we will be presenting to Mrs. Cooper's class in December.  We will be learning some new technology and we are planning on having a virtual museum that we will share with the first graders.  The students did an excellent job with coming up with our needs to know for this project.  They are beginning to really understand this process and we are excited about it.
     Our official "TRUST" cards came in this week and we are all wearing them with pride.  We have had some behaviors that we really needed to work on and now that we are able to wear our trust cards on lanyards we are already seeing improvement.  Students don't want to lose these cards!  We are really working on responsibility and respect right now especially with each other.
    Mrs. Dennie's interactive board finally arrived late last week and she is so happy!  She had been used to having one and to be without for the first grading period was hard.  She said it felt like her birthday and Christmas all wrapped up into one the day they installed the board.  The students have been using in this week as well helping to explain their thinking in math class.  This week in math we continued our work on fractions and we did a small project dealing with competitive eaters!  (It sounds crazy but it was a lot of fun!)  The students did mini-group presentations on Friday and they did a good job and really enjoy using the microphone!
    The little lizards arrived this week and have been placed in their temporary homes.  The students will be splitting their time in the big room for the next month working with Mrs. VanDerWeele and the critters and with Mr. Hunter on workshops dealing with our project.  We hope that this makes it easier to deal with the animals in smaller groups.
    In small group language arts we have started reading one of two books, The River or Running Out of Time.  Students will be reading these in class for the next several weeks.  They will be writing and answering comprehension questions as well as working on specific skills.
    We have some very active students in our classes and a few want to work on some special projects.  We have a few that are heading up a group to participate in Operation Christmas Child, look for more information to come home about this soon.  We have another who has contacted a group of service men and women and we will be sending them Holiday letters and cards.  It is awesome to have students who are passionate about something and they want to get their classmates involved.
    We hope you have a great week! 

Trying our Mrs. Dennie's new board

Group work time