September 9-13

     Well, we made it through the first full week in awhile!  We have lots of things happening here in the fifth grade!  The students projects are in full swing with first round presentations happening this coming Thursday.  We are excited to see how all of these wonderful ideas are going to be presented.  We have had a few bumps in the road which is to be expected when working with groups.  The learners all seem to be working out their issues and in a few cases we have stepped in to help resolve them.  This is a new way to learn for some students and we all have to work together to make is a positive experience so if you hear of any issues at home please shoot us an email and we will try and resolve them. 
     We went to visit the sixth grade Innovation Academy on Friday and got to do a walk through and look at some of their first projects.  This gave the students some different ideas of how they might want to present their future projects.   This was a great opportunity to learn from other students. 
     Achieve 3000 is a program that the students work on weekly.  This is a reading program that is on the computer and it focuses on non-fiction reading.  The students read articles and then answer questions about the article.  We have a contest each week between the other fifth grade teams and between our four classes as well.  These articles are given at each students reading level as determined by a pretest they took a few weeks ago.  Each article is written at many different levels so each student can be successful.  The expectation for all full weeks is that the students complete at least two articles at an average of 75% or higher.  The students are expected to go through the five steps for each article and that includes a writing step at the end called a Thought Question.  These are also leveled depending on their reading level.  Students completing the requirement each week receive a ticket to put in a box in the office and each quarter we have a drawing for a Kindle (one for each grade!)  Ask your child about what they have read on Achieve 3000 there are a lot of very interesting articles. 
    We hope you have a great week! 

A Long-Short Week

     Wow, this was a short week but a busy one!   The kids were in a bit of a Blueberry overload on Tuesday!  They were a little tired and so were we! 
     This week we had two more speakers come in to talk to us about their role in the Blueberry Festival.  Mrs. Linda Atkins came in on Tuesday to talk to us about what it is like to live right next to the park during the festival.  She shared the positives and the negatives for her.  Then on Wednesday, Officer Mark Owen came in and shared what the Plymouth Police have to do for the festival.  He gave us lots of good information on what it takes to make the festival a success. 
     After our speakers, students had to write a letter detailing their opinion of whether or not the Blueberry Festival should stay or if something else should take its place.  These letters are now being used to make new groups for next week.  Students will work together to come up with something to either help make the festival better or something that can replace it.  We are excited to see what the students come up with. 
     We have been working on decimals in math class, comparing and rounding them has been our first task.  This week we will work on adding and subtracting them.  We are finally up and running with technology and students will have some of their assignments loaded onto Echo. 
      In Social Studies and Language Arts, we have been working on regions, latitude and longitude and the compass rose.  We have been working on reading non fiction articles that tie into these topics as well.  We have been working on reading strategies and have begun to work on Achieve 3000.  Students will have to have 2 Achieve Articles done this week with a 75% average.  We appreciate any encouragement you can give at home. 
       Students seem to be doing very well on their Riverside Reads sheet.  Students have to read four books and complete an activity for each book each nine weeks.  Please ask your child about this. 
      Mrs. Dennie has had a student teacher with her and she has started teaching some lessons in math this past week.  She is actually in a program called Co-Teaching where Mrs. Dennie is with her and does not ever release the class totally to her.  This is a new program at IUSB and we are happy to have Miss Marijke Kunnen here with us,  She is here for another four weeks before heading to another placement. 
     We hope you have had a great weekend and are ready for a full week!  As always, please let us know if there is anything we can do to help! 

 Miss Kunnen teaching a math lesson

 Mrs. Linda Atkins sharing with the students

 Officer Mark Owen talking to the class

Blueberry Week!

     This was a short, fast week for students.  The students are definitely excited to be off of school for five days and they were full of energy for the three days here at school. 
     We had two speakers this week that talked to us and answered our questions about the Blueberry Festival.  We are getting excited about our project as we progress to the next stage.  Mike Hite came and talked to us about the park's involvement in the festival and Sherry Martin came and talked to us from the Blueberry office.  Lots of great information was given and the kids did a great job of listening to the speakers and taking notes for our work next week. 
     We had our first common assessment in math and the students did a nice job.  Those not getting an 80% will get remediation and have a re-test next week.  This is the process we will use to make sure they are understanding the math concepts. 
    Make sure your student is reading nightly.  We have an expectation of 30 mins per night.  We do not give a lot of homework so this is should not be hard for them to do.  Students have a chart called Riverside Reads that is replacing AR.  Students have to compete a row of the "chart" by reading a book and then completing an activity.  This is to be done each grading period.  Students have to get the books approved by their teacher prior to recording them.

    We hope you have a great Labor Day/Blueberry weekend. 

 

    

First Full Week!

    Well, we all survived our first full week in the fifth grade!  This has been a week of some challenges but the students handled things with ease.  There are a lot of learners in our new PBL environment and we expect some growing pains.  We just ask that everyone try their best and be patient as we all learn how to make this the best for all of our kids.
    We kicked off our first project this week and the kids are starting to work in groups that they did not pick.  This is different and takes some getting used to.  We are walking through processes to help make group work good for all involved.  We have some speakers coming in this next week to help us with the next phase of our project.  Make sure to ask your children what is going on in school.
     We had our pictures taken and practiced a new fire drill procedure and that all went well.  We should be ready to go for an official drill.  We started to go to our "classes" students have a scheduled math time, humanities (either LA/SS or LA/Science)  and small group reading,  each day.  Then depending on need they have extra time for reading and math daily.  These times can be enrichment or intervention.  We also have project time each day to work on our current project.  The students have done a nice job following their schedules. 
     We sent home the information about TRUST cards and are happy that most of them have come back signed.  We hope this is a positive way to encourage good behavior by giving privileges.
     This next week is a short school week for the students.  No school Thursday or Friday.  Have a great Blueberry Festival Weekend.

Welcome to the Innovation Academy @ Riverside 2013

     New school year, new building, new space, new name, new teacher/facilitators and new learners/classmates are a lot of new things to get used to for the students and for the facilitators!  We are all super excited to start this school year off right.  We have worked a lot over the summer to make sure that we started the year off creating a culture of collaboration and learning.  We were so glad to see so many of you at our Meet the Teacher night.  Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.  We are only an email or phone call away.

     This first few days we have been working with the learners on getting to know each other and leaning about how we can use Trust, Respect and Responsibility to become well rounded students/citizens.  We have done some fun activities to get to know each other and to learn about these characteristics.  We worked together as a team to come up with our class "Norms".  We decided we could work hard at living the following class "Norms"

 Be Respectful

Be Responsible

Be Trustworthy

Do Your Best

Treat others the way YOU want to be Treated!

     We have had some technology issues along the way and you will have that with a new space.  We are happy to say that we have a great support team who is working diligently to get these issues resolved quickly!

     We have finished our first four days today by having six speakers from around the community come and speak to us about how they use Trust, Respect and Responsibility in their lives.  This was a neat way to culminate our work in this area.  We hope that the students have learned something and that all of this work helps us to have the best year!  

    

 Team Meeting

 Classroom work

 Obstacle Course Directions

 Trust Obstacle Course

 TRUST RESPECT AND RESPONSIBILITY Speakers

 Christa Snyder

 Allie Holland

 Officer Ted Brown

 Tim Filson

 Beth Styers

 Jamie Greenlee