5-2 Updates ~ 10/28/18

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

Shout out to our room reps for putting so much energy into planning an amazing Halloween party for your children - Claudia Melachrinakis, Sophie Gryfakis, and Amy Duffey!!  They've worked so hard to make sure your kids will enjoy their afternoon :)  Be sure to thank them when you see them!

Important Dates

Halloween Parade & Party ~ Wednesday, October 31st ~ 1:10pm.  The kiddos are getting excited for our Halloween celebration Wednesday afternoon!  Our Annual Halloween Parade begins at 1:30pm, with the party immediately following.  It looks like we may have some beautiful weather for the parade ~ yay!  We look forward to seeing many you all along the route!  Please refer to the Olive Blog for more information on rain plans, as well as Halloween costume expectations.

Progress Reports ~ Friday, November 16th.  Progress reports will be shared electronically this year - more information to follow!  

Math

We continue our work on adding and subtracting fractions in chapter 3.  Converting fractions to like denominators is challenging for many of your children, but their diligent practice is beginning to pay off!  Keep practicing these skills at home, and encourage your children to watch online videos and practice skills on Khan Academy.  The Chapter 3 Assessment is currently scheduled for Thursday, November 8th, but may change as we move through this unit.  I will keep you posted! 

Science

We spent some time tracking the sun and shadows last week, and recorded observations in their Science Notebooks.  They used their data to create graphs, then analyzed them to make some claims about the sun and shadows. Your children learned that the sun is always opposite their shadow, that the position of the sun impacts the length of the shadow, and that the sun travels in an arc across the sky. They took a performance assessment on Friday demonstrating these skills, so they will be bringing home Owl Scorecards for a sign and return this week. 

To clarify our classroom policy - if a student does not meet standards on a scorecard, they are expected to correct the work and turn it back in the following day.  They will meet with me to review the concept or skill, and they are given time to correct their assignment in class so they can continue to seek support. If they do not finish the re-do work in class, they may bring home the assignment for homework. If your child continues to struggle with the work at home, please encourage them to return to me for support!

Reading
We continue our work investigating story elements in fiction by digging deeper into characters this week.  Your children have really enjoyed the stories we've been reading in class!  They've been entertaining and thought provoking, so they've prompted a great deal of discussion.  I've been so pleased with the way they are leaning in and engaging in these lessons!  They will be trying their hand at independently analyzing a character on Tuesday - look for the Owl Scorecard to come home later in the week. 

Writing

We will be wrapping up our personal narrative lessons early in the week, then beginning to work on our final personal narratives at the end of the week.  These final personal narratives will be due at the end of next week. They will be working on these in class, and should only need to work on them at home should they be absent or miss a lesson for band.

Just a reminder - students continue to work on research in their weekly LMC lessons to prepare for a debate.  They will engage in a debate about one of the following two topics:

Should we spend money on space exploration?
Would it be safe to live somewhere other than earth?

Ask your child which debate they are focused on, and which side they are on.  They will be working to gather research to support their debate over the next couple of weeks. The debate will be on Wednesday, 11/7 during their LMC time. Students will be assessed on their ability to gather information from multiple sources for research (writing standard), as well as their ability to support their claims with evidence (science standard) with this research.  Some of your children have missed a few lessons due to band, so they have fallen behind in their research. They may need to complete some of the research at home.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.
~ Mr. Rodgers

Cheers ~

Theresa Fowler

Happy 11th Birthday, Jake!!

Happy 11th Birthday, Flavia!!

5-2 Updates ~ 10/21/18

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

It was so nice to have a chance to speak with so many of you at parent-teacher conferences on Thursday and Friday!  I appreciated having the opportunity to meet earlier this year to share what I know about your child, and our plan as we move through the remainder of the trimester.  As I said to many of you, when the progress reports come home in November, please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Did you see that snow yesterday??  It was actually referred to as graupel on the forecast, so my family learned a new word.  Who knew there was a specific word for that snow-like hail that so angrily came down yesterday?!  At any rate, with the snow comes the colder temperatures.  Please be sure your child is dressed appropriately to be outside for at least 30 minutes at a time as we do go out for recess every day, and please be sure all outwear is labeled with their name. It's amazing how many things end up unclaimed in our lost and found. (See my note in science for this week!) 5th graders can push the line with independence in what they wear, so they do need the reminder they must be dressed appropriately for the temperatures outside.  If the temperatures are below 60 degrees, we expect the children to wear a jacket or coat.  

Important Dates

Team Building with the Principals ~ Monday, 10/22 from 2:15-3:15pm ~ Dr. FitzPatrick and Ms. Davis will be taking the 5th graders for an hour on Monday afternoon for a team building activity.  This has become a treasured activity for both our principals and the 5th graders as they always have such a great time getting to know each other a little better, while building community.

Family Reading Night ~ Tuesday, 10/23 from 6:30-8:00 ~ Families are invited to attend the Olive-Mary Stitt Family Reading Night!  Many families have already registered to attend the evening.  They will be provided with individual family schedules.  Please try to arrive 10 minutes early so that you have time to pick up your schedule for the night.  If your family missed the deadline to sign up, you may still attend two events that evening.  All families will be able to view the opening presentation from The Grove (a Glenview Park District nature center) at 6:30pm.  In addition everyone is invited to visit the OMS Library Media Center to work on activities related to our One Book One School event and to decide if they'd like to sponsor a book for our collection.

Read Aloud with the Principal ~ Friday, 10/26 from 9:10-10:10 ~ Dr. FitzPatrick will be back with your kiddos on Friday with a read aloud on Friday!  Focusing on the Owls for Others theme, she will be reading Do Unto Otters, then following it up with an activity.

Math

Most of you saw your child's performance on the chapter 2 assessment at conferences.  It was a challenging test, but I was pleased with their overall performance.  They really worked hard to master skills in this unit!  Give them a pat on the back for a job well done :)  If your child received 'developing' in either the Basic or Application category, I will continue to work with them during Target Time to help them meet the standard. 

With the end of chapter 2, we are moving on to adding and subtracting fractions in chapter 3, which means we will finally be working on a different standard!  We will actually be covering two standards in chapter 3 - adding and subtracting fractions, and performing operations on decimals as we will convert fractions to decimals.  This unit isn't quite as long as the previous unit, but we will work in it for the next 2-3 weeks.  as we get closer to the end of the unit, I will post our assessment date.  As in previous units, I will post assignments on Freckle and Khan to help your children gain extra practice on the skills.

Science

We will continue to make observations about the earth's rotation this week, so we will be outside on Monday and Tuesday multiple times throughout the day if it remains sunny as predicted (no more graupel, thank goodness ;).  If it's not, we will be out on Thursday and Friday.

We will collect date about the movement of the sun and shadows, then we will analyze that data to make assumptions and ultimately build models that accurately represent earth's rotation.  The only assessment in science this week is scheduled for Friday morning.  If we stay on schedule this week, they will take that quiz, and you will receive an Owl Scorecard early next week.

Reading
This week, we will be diving deeper into comprehension by focusing on story elements common to all fictional text - characters, setting, plot, conflict, resolution, and theme. Writers of fictional text use these elements to build meaning in stories, so good readers know how to break down these elements and uncover deeper meaning.  We will spend time identifying the story elements in several stories this week, but there won't be any assessments in reading until next week.

Writing

We will continue to sharpen our ability to show details in our writing this week by choosing strong verbs, especially in dialogue.  Toward the end of the week, we will focus on strengthening the organization in our writing with lessons on sequencing.  Next week, we will begin to pull together our final personal narratives - these will be scored as a summative assessment for our writing unit.

Students have also been working on research in their weekly LMC lessons to prepare for a debate.  They will engage in a debate about one of the following two topics:

Should we spend money on space exploration?
Would it be safe to live somewhere other than earth?

Ask your child which debate they are focused on, and which side they are on.  They will be working to gather research to support their debate over the next couple of weeks. The debate will be on Wednesday, 11/7 during their LMC time. Students will be assessed on their ability to gather information from multiple sources for research (writing standard), as well as their ability to support their claims with evidence (science standard) with this research.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; 
but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, 
he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
~ Clay P. Bedford

Cheers ~

Theresa Fowler

5-2 Updates ~ 10/14/18

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

I'm looking forward to seeing all of you this week at conferences and sharing your child's progress thus far in the trimester.  We will discuss their beginning of the year benchmark scores, I will have their midterm standards based grading report for you, as well as their goals for the remainder of the trimester.  Please let me know if you had any trouble setting up a conference on Sign-up Genius - I'd be happy to help you out!

Important Dates

CogAT ~ Students will be taking the Cognitive Abilities tests the week of October 15th - I listed the specific dates and times below. These tests are used for placement in middle school, so we encourage the students to do their best. Typically, students enjoy taking these tests because each test is a series of three 10 minute tests. Please do your best to ensure they will be in school at the times listed below, as students are pulled from instruction for makeup tests. If you have any questions about these tests or the advanced placement process for middle school, please do not hesitate to ask.

Monday, 10/15 ~ 9:10-10:10am ~ Verbal Battery (verbal analogies)

Tuesday, 10/16 - 9:10-10:10am ~ Quantitative Battery (finding patterns) 

Wednesday, 10/17 - 1:15-2:15pm ~ Nonverbal Battery (spatial reasoning)

Parent-Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, 10/18 & Friday, 10/19 - No School

Math

We spent the majority of this week on word problems.  Your children are developing their ability to read and break down a real-world problem, and then apply the computation to solve the problem.  Some parents have reached out to me to ask if there is a specific way we ask the students to solve the problems.  We do teach Bar Modeling as a strategy, but your child can use any strategy to solve the problem. So long as they arrive at the correct answer, I am not particular about the method.  If you would like to review Bar Modeling, just look back into the chapter.  You'll find several examples at the end of each chapter with the word problems.

Our Unit 2 Assessment is still tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, October 16th, but this chapter has been difficult for many of them, so I will assess their skills tomorrow and determine if they would benefit from an additional day of practice.  If you would like to support your child in this chapter, please review the Chapter Wrap-Up on Student Book pages 116-117 or the Self-Assessment I gave them at the beginning of the unit.  Both of these resources will help identify the areas your children still need to practice in this unit.

Please continue to encourage your child to log on to Khan Academy and Freckle to practice multiplying and dividing whole numbers. Many of your children are still struggling with the automaticity of their multiplication facts, which is causing computation errors during this unit.  Please ask your child to log on to one of the math fact games site for 10 minutes every night - it's an engaging way to practice their math facts!

Science

Your children were very excited to begin the Earth and Space science unit this week!  They had a great time exploring Google Earth and creating models of the earth, then we moved into a lesson on earth's gravity, where your children thoughtfully created models of earth's gravity. As I mentioned last week, their science work will primarily be completed on the Science Companion website.  Your child should have introduced you to the site this week as they were asked to share the Family Link with you from the website.  You can also review the work they are doing in their science journals online.

As you noticed with social studies, our science standards are very different this year.  We will discuss this more at conferences, but until then, you will see two Owl Scorecards coming home for the work they did in the first two science lessons. They were assessed on their ability to create models, as this is a critical component of the scientific process.  Please look for the Owl Scorecards to come home for a sign and return.

Reading

Your children wore their Book Review t-shirts with pride on Thursday, and they did an excellent job presenting their Book Review Talk!  I was SO impressed with the quality of the t-shirts and the effort so many of them put into preparing their presentations!  We gave the 5th graders 30 minutes on Thursday to share their t-shirts and book talks as an entire group.  They were so engaged in conversation with each other, and so many were recording book titles they were interested in reading.  I loved their enthusiasm for their book and encouragement of each other's creative work! I've included some pictures below for you to check out :)  The t-shirts are hanging in the hallway so you can check them out when you come in for conferences.  I'll send them home in a couple of weeks.  Look for the Owl Scorecards to come home this week for a sign and return.

Writing

We finished up our focus on showing this week, so I had students choose their favorite entry from this section of our writing unit and submit it to me for grading.  I will score these as I did the Focus submissions, and I will suggest a Revision Assignment.  After they submit those revisions, I will formally score the entry and send home another Owl Scorecard.  I hope to get those scored this week so I have them for you at conferences, but it's a short week, so we may run out of time!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  

Education begins the moment we see children as innately wise and capable beings.  Only then can we play along in their world.
~ Vince Gowmon

Cheers ~

Theresa Fowler

5-2 Updates ~ 10/08/18

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

I hope you your long weekend was filled with plenty of relaxing moments with your family!  Though the weather was less than perfect for outdoor activities much of the weekend, it was perfect for football and board games - some of my favorite fall activities!  It was nice to get outside in the sunshine today - I'm sure we don't have too many more of these warm days left!

Important Dates

International Walk to School Day ~ Tuesday, October 9th - Tomorrow is the day!  We hope you will encourage your child to walk to school in celebration of International Walk to School Day!  Our staff will be at a number of pick-up points throughout the neighborhoods, looking forward to walking to school with your children :)  See the Olive Blog for pick-up points. I will be at Belmont and Maude at about 8:40am - hope to see some of you there!

CogAT ~ Students will be taking the Cognitive Abilities tests the week of October 15th - I listed the specific dates and times below. These tests are used for placement in middle school, so we encourage the students to do their best. Typically, students enjoy taking these tests because each test is a series of three 10 minute tests. Please do your best to ensure they will be in school at the times listed below, as students are pulled from instruction for makeup tests. If you have any questions about these tests or the advanced placement process for middle school, please do not hesitate to ask.

Monday, 10/15 ~ 9:10-10:10am ~ Verbal Battery (verbal analogies)

Tuesday, 10/16 - 9:10-10:10am ~ Quantitative Battery (finding patterns) 

Wednesday, 10/17 - 1:15-2:15pm ~ Nonverbal Battery (spatial reasoning)

Parent-Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, October 18th & Friday, October 19th - I'm looking forward to the opportunity to meet with each of you a little earlier this year to discuss your child's progress halfway through the first term. The sign-up window opens tomorrow at 10am. Please let me know if you have any difficulties signing up for a conference through Sign-up Genius.

Math

We continue to work on computation skills in Unit 2 in my math class.  It's taking us a little longer to move through this unit than I originally planned, so our Unit 2 Assessment is now scheduled for Tuesday, October 16th. As we move toward the end of the unit this week, spend some time reviewing the Chapter Wrap-Up on Student Book pages 116-117 or the Self-Assessment I gave them at the beginning of the unit.  Both of these resources will help identify the areas your children still need to practice in this unit.

Please continue to encourage your child to log on to Khan Academy and Freckle to practice multiplying and dividing whole numbers. Many of your children are still struggling with the automaticity of their multiplication facts, which is causing computation errors during this unit.  Please ask your child to log on to one of the math fact games site for 10 minutes every night - it's an engaging way to practice their math facts!

Social Studies

We will be finishing up our Social Studies Unit with a Chapter 12 Assessment tomorrow.  Students were encouraged to bring home their History Alive book to re-read the chapter, and prepare for the assessment by reviewing the Chapter 12 Review Key posted on Google Classroom. Ask your child how the Declaration of Independence was the beginning of our government!

Your child will also be bringing home an Owl Scorecard for the Chapter 11 Assessment they took last Tuesday. Please sign and return these scorecards.  As always, if they did not demonstrate mastery of standards, they will be given additional opportunities to practice the skills and take another assessment.

Science

We will begin our Earth in Space unit this week during content time.  This unit helps students discover the wonder of our planet and its relationship to objects in space, such as the sun and other stars. 

The majority of our work, including their textbook and science journals, will all take place on our Science Companion site (sd25.sciencecompanionprime.com).  Your children will be introduced to this website on Thursday, and given their username and password to access the site. Please ask them to log on and share the Family Link with you on Thursday to ensure they can access the site at home.

Reading

We finished our Launching Unit this week, and students turned in the contents of their Reading Notebook after evaluating themselves and a peer using the Reading Notebook Rubric. They also scored their performance in reading conversations using the Conversation Checklist. I evaluated their performance and attached these rubrics to Owl Scorecards.  They will bring these home to be signed and return tomorrow.

Reminder: the Book Review T-shirts are due on Thursday, 10/11.  Students should come to school with the actual book and their t-shirts worn over another shirt.  They will wear their t-shirts all day to advertise their books to staff and students - any time someone sees their shirt and wants to know more about that book, they will be stopping your child for a quick Book Talk.  Then, in the afternoon, all of the students will do their Book Talk in front of the class.

We begin our Fiction Reading Unit on Tuesday.  While we have focused on reading workshop behaviors in our Launching unit, we will focus on comprehension skills in this unit.  Throughout the unit, as we introduce and work on specific comprehension skills, your children will be evaluated on mastery of the skill.  When they are formally evaluated, they will bring home an Owl Scorecard to share their score with you.

Writing

I also scored their Focus Revision Assignment this weekend, so they will be bringing home an Owl Scorecard sharing their progress with you. These are also a sign and return.  This scorecard shares their progress in a number of standards, including focus in their writing, how well they participate in the writing process, and using conventions and spelling in their written work. 

We have worked on improving their skill of showing in their writing over two weeks. After our final lesson on showing tomorrow, students will be given the opportunity to submit their strongest showing writing sample to me.  I will score it for showing, and return it to them for another Revision Assignment.  When this assignment is complete, you will see it come home as another Owl Scorecard.  In the meantime, I do post scores and comments in Google Classroom - please just ask your child to log you in and have them share their Revision Assignment with you.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  

“Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. 
They remember what you are.”– Jim Henson

Cheers ~

Theresa Fowler

5-2 Updates ~ 10/01/18

Hello 5-2 Parents ~

Good morning!  I apologize for the delay in sending out this week's update - the weekend got away from me!  It was a great weekend for snuggling up indoors - I hope you enjoyed some relaxing family time :)

Important Dates

SIP Day (No School) ~ Friday, October 5th

Columbus Day (No School) ~ Monday, October 8th

International Walk to School Day ~ Tuesday, October 9th - Encourage your child to walk to school on Tuesday in celebration of International Walk to School Day!  Our staff will be at a number of pick-up points throughout the neighborhoods, looking forward to walking to school with your children :)  See the Olive Blog for pick-up points, and join us for the walk!

Parent-Teacher Conferences ~ Thursday, October 18th & Friday, October 19th - I'm looking forward to the opportunity to meet with each of you a little earlier this year to discuss your child's progress halfway through the first term.  Please let me know if you have any difficulties signing up for a conference through Sign-up Genius.

Math

We continue to work on computation skills in Unit 2 in my math class.  Our Unit 2 Assessment is currently scheduled for Friday, October 12th. As we move toward the end of the unit this week, spend some time reviewing the Chapter Wrap-Up on Student Book pages 116-117 or the Self-Assessment I gave them at the beginning of the unit.  Both of these resources will help identify the areas your children still need to practice in this unit.

Please continue to encourage your child to log on to Khan Academy and Freckle to practice multiplying and dividing whole numbers. Many of your children are still struggling with the automaticity of their multiplication facts, which is causing computation errors during this unit.  Please ask your child to log on to one of the math fact games site for 10 minutes every night - it's an engaging way to practice their math facts!

Social Studies
As I mentioned in my email on Thursday, your children will be taking a Unit 11 Assessment tomorrow.  We spent time this morning reviewing for that assessment, but some of them could use some additional practice this evening.  They should be re-reading chapter 11, as well as reviewing the Chapter 11 Organizer Key that I posted last week on Google Classroom.

We also continue to move through Chapter 12 - the Declaration of Independence. We will work on the Chapter 12 Review this week (due Wednesday), as well as writing our own break-up letter on Wednesday and Thursday.  We will wrap up our Social Studies unit on Tuesday, October 9th with the Unit 12 Assessment.  This will be a more traditional multiple choice assessment on the Declaration of Independence with a short answer question.  There are already resources available on Google Classroom for them to use to prepare, and the Chapter 12 Review Key will be uploaded on Wednesday.

Science

Next week, we begin our Earth and Space unit!

Reading

In our short reading time this week, we practiced writing and sharing excellent Book Reviews - your children are very passionate about what they read and are excited to share reviews with their friends!  I'm impressed with how many were able to "sell" their books to others.  

Reminder: the Book Review T-shirts are due on Thursday, 10/11.  Students should come to school with the actual book and their t-shirts worn over another shirt.  They will wear their t-shirts all day to advertise their books to staff and students - any time someone sees their shirt and wants to know more about that book, they will be stopping your child for a quick Book Talk.  Then, in the afternoon, all of the students will do their Book Talk in front of the class.

I have been and will continue to meet individually with each of your children to discuss and score their Reading Notebook and the Conversation Observation Checklist. We discuss what they are doing well in reading, and specific ways they can improve their notebooks and participation.  Since we are in the Launching unit, where we are establishing routines and behaviors for our Reading Workshop, we are not yet focusing on comprehension standards.  The Conversation Observation Checklist is their participation in reading conversations and will translate into Speaking and Listening Standards.  The Reading Notebook Rubric is their written participation in Reading, and will translate into Communication Standards. In other words, these standards reflect how well your child is performing in a Reading Workshop, and not necessarily how well they are comprehending.  With that said, it is important to note that these behaviors are critically important as they move to comprehend the complex 5th grade texts this year.

Currently, reading grades are formative assessment grades - they are feedback grades to let the students know how they are performing according to expectations, which is why I have not sent home an Owl Scorecard just yet.  I believe it is important to help students understand how they are meeting expectations and how they can improve before we get to the end grade. They all know they will be scored again at the end of the unit - this will be their summative grade, which will replace their formative score in my grade book. These scorecards will come home at the end of the unit.

Writing

We continued our work on focusing in writing last week - focus on a moment, on a object, on a setting, and even on sounds.  We spend some time sitting outside in silence, just listening to the sounds.  As they listened carefully, they recorded the sounds and describing words on their lapboards, then used their notes to write a journal entry when we got back to the classroom.  Your kiddos enjoyed the peaceful moments so much they didn't want to go in!  They asked if we could do it every day - perhaps we'll add some regular meditation to our day :) 

I had the students choose their most focused journal entry and submit it to me for a score on the focus writing standard.  They were also scored on conventions and spelling.  You can find these scores on Google Classroom - just ask your child to take you to their Revision Assignment. 

I gave each of the students feedback on their journal entry, and have returned it to them.  They will be revising the entries based on my feedback, then re-submitting for another score.  I will send home an Owl Scorecard when I score the revised journal entry.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children.

 One is roots; the other, wings.

~ Hodding Carter

Cheers ~

Theresa Fowler