Winter . . . . . . I guess it is December in Indiana

   Well, that sure was a winter storm wasn't it?  This past week was very busy and with a two hour delay in there it made it all the more crazy!  We have been very proud of the students during this current project!  They have worked very hard at each of the benchmarks we have set for them.  The culmination of all this work has been their creations using the Layar App.  We have been very excited to see their creativity in the way their group has decided to use this piece of technology!  We hope that some of you will be able to join us anytime Monday, December 16th from 12:30-2:30.  Please remember if you have a mobile device to download the Layar App so that you can use it as we only have 20 devices available here. 
     We had a practice walk through and worked on our last minute technology bugs on Friday and we were so impressed with the way the students handled themselves.  Most of them are really starting to "get it" in terms of how this PBL process works.  We had some visitors and they were impressed with the way the students explained what was happening.  It is hard to believe that they are in fifth grade sometimes, (then we go to recess and we remember they are in 5th grade!) 
     We finished up our adopt a soldier project on Friday and are mailing a large package on Monday.  The cards the students made were great and we hope we hear back from them in the new year!  We are finishing up our collection for our two adopted families tomorrow, Monday.  We have quite a bit donated already and we hope on Monday we fill in the gaps.  We will be wrapping all of these things Tuesday and will deliver them on Wednesday.  We hope the students enjoy making someone else happy!  They have sure been excited when they bring in their donations, whether it is a few cans of vegetables or an outfit they can't wait to show us and have us mark it down. 
     We had our first Rocket Night of the year on Thursday evening and it was very well attended by our team!  It is always fun to see the students outside of the regular school day!  As a school we collected eight laundry baskets full of food for the food pantry!  Other than the craziness of pick up it was a great night! 
     We will be finishing up things this week in all of our areas.  The novels the students are reading should be finished this week.  We will be taking a common assessment on the Explorers and Native Americans.  We will take a common assessment on units of measure in math and we will have a little science exploration as well! 
    Don't forget that Riverside Reads is due January 16th as that is the last day of this grading period.  That means students have an extra two weeks due to winter break!  We are hoping for 100% of our students to complete this task this quarter!  They are all capable!  Also, please help remind them that they have two Achieve 3000 articles due each week! 
    Stay warm and we hope to see many of you tomorrow for our Gallery Walk! 

Making Gallon Guys in Math Class

 Rocket Night Fun

Checking out each others projects

Looks Like Winter has Arrived!

     It sure is cold out there tonight!  It is really hard to believe we are only two weeks away from winter break!  Christmas will be here before we know it!  We are very excited and proud of the kids for their enthusiasm with our adopt a family project and our soldier project.  You are raising very caring kids and we are very excited to see how this project ends up!  Due dates on things are:  Soldier project items need to be here by Friday, December 13 and family items need to be here by Monday, December 16.  We will be packaging up items to mail and wrapping items to deliver!  This is such a good lesson to all of us at this time of the year. 
     We are finishing up our Native American and Explorer project this week, weather permitting!  We are hoping all things fall into place and our first grade friends come to visit us on Friday.  We would love to have any of you come to visit as well.  We will send out exact times as soon as we here for sure when the first graders are coming to visit.  If you are interested in coming to visit if you would down load the LayAr app onto your mobile device (the free version is all you need) that would be helpful and then you will be able to see the "Augmented Reality" the students have created.  As always with a new app we are a little nervous but we have been working with Mrs. Holland and we have seen some great things so far!  So, look for an email early this week with times we will be available to have visitors come see our virtual LayAr musuem! 
    All of the lizards have found their homes and we will be taking a break from science to concentrate on social studies so that we are ready for our next project.  We learned a lesson running the lizards and our Native American/Explorer projects at the same time and we will not be doing that again if we can help it.  We will separate these next time.  Just like the learners we as facilitators are learning as we go and we cannot be afraid to change things that are not working and learn from challenges!  The students did enjoy the lizards and they learned about consumers and producers! 
     We are hoping to finish up the trade books we are reading soon!  We have been working on using transition words in our writing and we will be taking a writing prompt this week to see how we have been doing.  Just a reminder that this grading period ends two weeks after we get back from winter break.  Students need to have their four books read and their reviews written by then to complete their Riverside Reads requirement.  They must have this accomplished to be invited to the Roster party for the quarter!  Also, weekly Achieve 3000 is a requirement that they must complete at least two articles at a goal of 75% and two thought questions!  This program really helps prepare them for the writing they will have to do later and on the ISTEP.  This year the writing portion of the ISTEP will be online so typing paragraphs on the computer will really help them.
     In math this week we worked on reading decimals and fractions on a number line in fifth grade math and in advanced math we working on ratio and rate.  We keep working on our facts daily and improvement is being seen! 
     We hope you have a great week!  Stay warm! 

Photos from the week!

Happy December!

    Well, having Wednesday off was unexpected but we hope that you were able to enjoy your Thanksgiving with your families. We had planned to have a different day on Wednesday and have a lot of project work time and some celebration time as well.  We are going to continue with our plan on Monday and give students the time they need to complete this phase of the project and move on to the next and the one they are the most excited about!  For planning purposes, we are hoping to have our virtual museum up and ready to go on Friday, December 13.  We will let parents know details if they would like to come and visit.  We may have a few times the following week available as well.  Stay tuned for more information! 
     With the holidays approaching we will be soon sending home information about two service projects we would like to do this year.  Our team is going to adopt two families this year and provide them with a Christmas meal and presents for the children.  As soon as we get our list we will put out tags that the students can grab if they wish.  The tags will have all sorts of things on them from a can of corn to clothes or toys.  If your child brings a tag home and it is something you would rather not send then just have them bring the tag back.  We will do our best to supply these families with a great Christmas meal and some items their children need and hopefully want.  The second service project involves adopting soldiers for Christmas.  One of our students approached us about this and we will be sending a package to a group of 10 soldiers in Kuwait.  We will be writing them letters and would like to send some small items over as well.  Some ideas for this are books, DVD's, soaps, shampoos, candy, anything fun or silly that would break up the tedium, spices, etc.  This project will need to be done quickly so look for more information on this to come home soon.  We hope that everyone will be able to participate and help in at least one of these projects.  The students really love to help others and we hope that we hear back from our soldiers and maybe some students will become their pen-pals. 
     We did kick off the next phase of our project on Monday with Mrs. Holland.  She will be helping all of us use this new app and help  us create something that will be interesting and fun for all who come to see it!  The app we are using is called LayAr and it looks to be a pretty neat piece of technology. 
     We hope the students are all rested up and ready to tackle the next three weeks before winter break begins.  The next two will be super busy with our project!  Thanks for all of your support let's hope we don't get too much snow as we need every day we can get to get these projects complete! 

Just a few photos of Mrs. Holland sharing with us.

November 18-22

    Wow, is time flying?  We can't believe that Thanksgiving is next week already!  We have been working hard this week on our Native American and Explorers charts.  This has been a struggle for some in time management and working together.  Some groups flew through the task and really worked together while others struggled a bit.  We tried to come around and help some of the struggling groups with some strategies.  Some were double doing the work and needed some guidance.  We are so thankful for some great students and instructional assistance who have helped through this process as well.  We hope that the students are learning how to work on a task like this together.
     As we start the next step in our project students will be focusing in on one group or person.  They will be learning a lot more about this group or person and they will be sharing this with their classmates and with our first grade friends in a few weeks.  We are very excited to work with Mrs. Allie Holland for the next few weeks to create a very cool virtual museum.  Stay tuned for more details! 
     Our first round of Explorations was this past week and students were able to go to other parts of the school and learn to do something different.  It sounded like they had a great time and met some new people and played some fun games and learned so really neat things.  
     In math, we are still working with fractions and this week we multiplied and divided them.  We learned what the reciprocal was and what it meant to invert and multiply (or as we say it ... Copy, Change, Flip).  We will have a common assessment on this on Wednesday.  The advanced group took this assessment this past week and will begin working on unit rate.  We also, as always, keep working on our facts. 
     In language arts, we have been continuing with our trade books and answering questions in class.  We continue to work on Achieve 3000 and our writing as well.  Students this year will be taking the writing portion of the ISTEP on the computer so we will be moving our journals from paper and pencil to our lap tops and we will be working on encouraging students to work on their typing skills. 
     In science, we are finishing up our work with our little lizard friends.  We will be having a common assessment over producers, consumers and decomposers soon.  The students have really enjoyed these critters.  In social studies this week we continued to work on learning more about Native Americans.  We also learned about JFK some on Friday with that being the 50th anniversary of his assassination. 
     This next week is a shot one and it looks to be a cold one so encourage your child to wear warm clothes as they go outside until it is below 10 degree windchill.  Have a great week!

Some Exploration photos

 Inverting Donny

 Donny is the Reciprocal of Owen

 Work in Science Class

 Helping explain a problem to each other

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