First and Fifth Grade Updates

First Grade

This week we welcomed Sage Filmore to our class.

We started the day with a book about school.  I often choose activities that have a variety of levels of difficulty just to see how the students respond.  The School Book was one such activity.  I thought the activities would be easy, but I wanted find out what ideas the students had about school.  Well, it turns out a couple of the activities were harder for the children than I expected, but this is always a happy result so we ran with the ideas.  By the time we finished the book, the students had made new connections to school they hadn't been able to think of on their own.  We also touched on time using both analog clocks and writing the time in digital format.  This is an area I would like to spend more time with.
 
Remember, they should finish the word search and the questions on the last page of the School Book.
 
I gave everyone a new Roman Numeral Bookmark.  We'll review them again next week and then complete some problems using Roman instead of our numbers.
 
I also read the first chapter of Flat Stanley to the children.  This book will lead us into a unit on writing friendly letters and geography.  (Details to follow.)
 
Next week, we'll review the answers to our school questions, read more of Flat Stanley and start learning about Sybil the Scientist and her Analytical thinking skills.   I am also hoping we'll have time to study the book about Alexander and his bad day.  We'll look at ways to deal with frustration, anger and other emotions.

Fifth Grade

 

It is a perk of teaching the same children each year that I do not have to spend as much time reviewing expectations for behavior as a regular classroom teacher might need to do when meeting a new class. Because of this, we got right to work.

 

Each day when the children come in, we will do some sort of mind stretching activity.  This week it was a word puzzle called Plexers.  These are common phrases or words that are shown in an interesting way.  Ask your child about the ones we covered this week.  We'll do more next week.  We also tried to think of words related to school that no one else could think of.  Try this at home and see if you can name something not covered by the fifth graders.

 

We also reviewed the goals and expectations of GATE.  I explained each of the four main program goals in detail.  We talked about how these relate to projects we've done in the past and even to the brain stretching activities we did at the beginning of class.  I will be giving the students a copy of these goals to keep in their binder.

 

I read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst. While it's fun to read picture books, they often have very solid messages about dealing with life. This week's lesson was dealing with our emotions.  We'll continue our discussions next week.

 

STOCK MARKET GAME (SMG) - I understand the the SMG is a confusing assignment.  There are so many vocabulary words involved in the stock market that there would be no way to review all the unknown words in a way that would make sense.  Think of this assignment as a pre-test which is why I do NOT want parents to help.  I want to see if, even with confusing vocabulary, your child can find answers in a reading.  The questions are written such that the same vocabulary appears in the text and the questions.  IT IS OK FOR YOUR CHILD TO STRUGGLE.  It's also ok, for them to not finish the quiz.  I would however like them to note which words / phrases they weren't able to figure out.  As the weeks go on, they will master this language, the language of the stock market world.

 

EQUATIONS: I have already had students ask when Equations will start.  This is up to you the parents.  Traditionally, at Flynn Park, the parents run practices while I reinforce the concepts here in class.  I haven't been sent the dates for the competition yet, but should have that by Mid-October.   So, if you can commit to about 2 hours a week as a coach, we'd love to have you.  Some classes have met her at Flynn after school, others meet in homes on the weekend.  It's really up to whomever volunteers to be the coach.