November 11-15

     Well, we hope this finds you all well after the windy Sunday we have had today.  This week felt like it flew by as well.  The students have been put into new groups and are working on researching about Native Americans and explorers.  They are learning a little about each group right now and will be digging deeper into one group or person soon.   With the start of each new project we go through some growing pains with the new groups.  We are trying to work with the students to learn to get along with all different types of people.  We also want them to share the work not do it all or expect someone to do it all for them.  This is a hard skill for fifth graders to learn but we are all working on this together.
     On Monday of this week we had a Veterans Day program.  We had a wonderful song by our fifth grade choir and we heard a story that really made us think.  Mr. Hunter spent some time in social studies talking about Veterans as well.
     The little lizards are becoming part of our routine.  One little one hid and we thought he had escaped but he was buried in the dirt!  They are keeping Ms. VanDerWeele hoping!  Students are learning about these animals and other animals as we study producers, decomposers and consumers.
    We took a common assessment in math on Friday over adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers.  As a group, Mrs. Dennie was very pleased with the result.  We have some students who will be taking a form B later in the week but the class really scored well on this skill!
     In language arts we have continued to work on our books in class.  Students are reading and answering comprehension questions in class.  We continue to work on our writing as well.
     The Operation Christmas Child project is underway and our team has been assigned to bring in toothbrushes and toothpaste.  If you have any extra we need these items by Wednesday, November 20.  Two of our students are organizing this project with us.  We want to support them the best we can.  The United Way Penny War begins tomorrow.  Students bring in pennies on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to score points for their class.  On Thursday and Friday they bring in silver to take away points other classes.  The students love it and it is a great way to help United Way.
     Just a heads up that there will be a community open house for the Innovation Academy at Riverside on next Sunday, November 24th from 2-5:00 pm.  Sixth grade students are serving as tour guides but you and your students are welcome to attend it you wish.  There is no requirement that you come we just wanted you to be aware!  
     Have a great week!

Pictures from this week!

    

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

October 28-November 1

     Another week is in the books and it was a busy one!  We had great participation in our Red Ribbon Week dress up days!  We had a lot of fun each day seeing what Mr. Hunter and Mr. Premetz would be wearing (always an adventure!)  We hope that through our discussions this weeks helps our students make good decisions. 
     We finished up our latest project with presentations on Friday!  We really appreciate the parents who came in to be part of our panel.  We are going to share your feed back with the groups and hope that this will help them grow.  We had some awesome presentations and some that could use a little bit more work.  We are all at different places and we hope that by watching each other the students will see what they need to work on.  We as facilitators can talk about things until we are blue in the face but if they see it for themselves it will make a difference! 
     We will be doing some peer feed back tomorrow on the project we just finished and then getting ready to kick off our next project on Tuesday.  We hope your children come home excited to share with you what we are up to next!  We want to keep them excited and ready to learn! 
     In math we have been working with fractions in both classes.  We are looking at where we see these outside of the math classroom and when we might use them.  The students are working hard and we have started with a couple of groups a number of the day that we are skip counting with.  The hope is that the more we do this the better students will get with their math facts.  Thanks to those who have been working with their children on their math facts.  We can tell that some have been really working on them. 
      In social studies we worked this week on Red Ribbon activities and in science we started getting our containers ready for the animals (lizards) that will be arriving later this week.  Stay tuned for more on these critters! 
      In language arts we have really been working on writing skills this week.  The more they write the better!  With this new grading period, don't forget that Riverside Reads starts over and students should  not wait until the last minute to get this accomplished.  Also, don't forget each week students are to complete two Achieve 3000 articles at a 75% average as their goal.   Thanks for your encouragement at home on these two programs. 
      We hope you got some extra sleep this weekend with the time change and we look forward to a great week! 

Our mixed match clothes day!

 Practice presentations

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.