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.  

New Project Kick Off Week!

    What a fun kick off we had on Monday for our newest project.  Our "Driving Questions" for this project is, "How would knowledge of sun and moon positions help you to survive in a new environment?"  The students did a wonderful job of coming up with our "Needs to Know" after our entry event.  We were so excited to see them come up with the skills that we were hoping they would realize they need.  This should be a fun project for all of us. 

     With our needs to know the students realized that we needed to read the book the City of Ember to find out more about this situation and where the people are coming from.  We have spent the past four days working in groups reading and learning more about the people of Ember as well as working on finding similes and metaphors in the book.
     We also, realized that we needed to learn some things about the sun, moon and shadows to complete our projects.  So, in science this week we started to work on these topics and will continue to explore these for the next few weeks.
     In math, we have been working on long division this week.  Some students are really struggling with this skill and it is not because they don't know the steps to long division.  Some students are struggling because they do not know their multiplication facts.  We have many programs that the students have been signed up for online to help them with this but old fashioned flash cards work great as well.  Ask your child some facts at the dinner table or at breakfast.  Quiz them on the way to school or to practice.  We are going to be skip counting around the school as well to help with this.  Anything you at home can do to help with this would be GREAT.
     We have three weeks left in the grading period so students need to remember that their Riverside Reads needs to be completed by the end of each grading period.  Also, students need to remember each week they need to do two Achieve 3000 articles.
     We will be sending home midterms on Monday.  Please look for these in the red folders.

Photos from our Entry Event!

    

Week of September 16-20

    Another full week is under our belts!  (Ask your kids if that is a simile or a metaphor!)  We have all been working hard, facilitators and learners (teachers and students).  The students gave their first presentations to their homerooms this week.  This is a big learning process for a lot of the students.  They all did things well and they all have things to work on.  We have been discussing these things together and the kids know that, "as good as we are we can always get better!"  We are very proud of them and the way they presented to their peers.  We will be asking for people to come in and watch future presentations and we hope a lot of you will be able to attend.  Students will present this year in a variety of ways and we know they will learn from each new experience.  Parents you are always welcome to come and check out what is going on in our classrooms.  Just shoot the homeroom teacher an email and we can tell you what time things are happening each day!
     We will be kicking off our next project on Monday.  We are all excited for this next project as this is totally new for all of us.  We hope your children are coming home excited about what we are doing here at school.
     Students have been finishing up this quarter's social studies content this past week and we will be starting on science this week.  We hope you hear a lot about the sun, moon and shadows in the next few weeks.  In language arts, we have been working a lot with simile's and metaphor's.  We also read an interesting article about Niagara Fall.  In math we have been working on multiplying whole numbers and the students learned a different way to multiply called the Lattice method.  They do not have to use this method but it is an option.  (It is how they multiply in China!)  In advanced math we have finally started into the 6th grade content and are working on multiplying and dividing decimals.
     Achieve 3000 and Riverside Reads are something students can always be working on!  Two Achieve articles each week at 75% or higher first try and four books on the Riverside Reads for each quarter.  Thanks for encouraging your children in both of these areas!
     We hope you have a great week!  Please let us know if we can help with anything!

Our Student Council Representatives for this year!

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