THE HORROR!!!

Today we talked about student loans.  The eyes popping out of the students’ heads would be hilarious if the actual situation weren’t so scary.

Students took their total cost of education that they researched, and then figured out what their monthly loan payment would be if they paid it off in 20 years.  Some students found this to be quite scary.  So did Mr. Potter.

 

In science we continued to talk about ecosystems, and the effects of organisms being removed or added to an ecosystem.  Just one organism being removed or added can have a dramatic effect.

Tonight students should finish up their review packet on animals and ecosystems.  They should answer questions 21 – 40.  They should also pick FOUR new vocab words to write in the back of their science journal (under the two from yesterday).  They should write the definition for these in their own words.

 

In math we reviewed adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing with decimals and fractions.  At first I was really worried that we had forgotten all of this somehow, but after one or two little reminders we were back on track.

Tonight students should do pages 18–181 in their math coach (more volume stuff)

They also have some decimal and fraction problems to work out.

Math Problems June 7

If they need them, here are the notes we took today:

Math Notes June 7

 

Not much today, so I don’t think we really need a tl;dr.

EOGs are in less than 10 days!!!

 

Read tonight!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

 

 

What a great Monday!  I had a meeting this morning, so the children were left a bit to their own devices during morning check-in, and they did a fantastic job.  We have a firm grip on our routine at this point.

So we did some review of plants, animals, ecosystems, biomes, food chains, food webs, and all that kind of stuff this morning.  We have received a big ol’ review packet, and took a bunch of little quizzes to see how much we remember.  It went much better than expected!

Tonight students should answer questions 1-20 in the packet.  We did 1-5 together in class.  They should also pick two words from the packet (or from their science journal) and define the words in the back of their science journal in their own words.

Next we did some work on our project.  This week students are figuring out their taxes, utilities, and their student loan payments.  To say the children were surprised at the amount of money they would be paying in taxes is an understatement.  They were also in a bit of shock after we talked about utilities and other necessary bills.  All of a sudden students realized they have much less money  than they thought they did.

We had an opportunity to talk about how sometimes when parents say we can’t go out to eat every day or we can’t buy every video game in the world, it’s not because they are being mean.  I really like some of the discussion and questions the students have brought up with this project.

This also gave us a great opportunity to review multiplying by decimals, as we worked out our tax rates and net income!

Next we talked about the basic mathematical operations, and did some more work with volume.  Tonight students should finish pages 172 – 179 in their math coach.  This deals mostly with volume and area.

 

 

so, tl;dr

Finish questions 1-20 in the science eog review packet.

Pick two words from the packet or science journal, and define them in your own words in the back of your science journal.

Pages 172-179 in Math Coach

 

Read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

 

Just a very quick update today.  I have too many meetings to go to.

 

Today we talked a bit about memorial day, and read In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 

This led us on a talk about wars, world wars, nuclear weapons, and all sorts of stuff.  It was very interesting, if somewhat depressing and scary.

 

After this we continued our review.

Tonight students should read this passage:

Whales

Just as they have been, they should answer the questions with reasoning, write a summary, analyze the text structure of a paragraph, and tell me a genre and sub-genre.

 

In math we did more fraction operations review today.  We also started talking about volume!!

Tonight students should check all of their math sheets from this week.  They received the answers in class.  Anything they missed, they should re-do until they understand why they missed it, and how to do it correctly.

Students should also do pages 168-171 in the math coach.  It’s introductory volume stuff, and should be pretty straightforward.

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

I hope everyone had a nice and relaxing 3-day weekend!

 

This week we will be getting into the real nitty-gritty of our My Success project.  Students have researched their career, written a resume, and had an interview.  Today they were assigned jobs and salaries!  Using these, students must now create a budget.  They will be learning about spreadsheets and using google sheets in order to come up with a monthly budget that is realistic.

They will be finding a place to live and shopping for food and the necessities this week.  More info is on the My Success page!

Students are welcome to work on this at home but they should have enough time to finish most of it in class.

 

Our homework tonight reflects our devotion to review – For the remainder of the quarter our homework will focus on basic understandings that students NEED to have before they leave 5th grade.

 

In math, students should pick ONE of the following to finish tonight.  They should focus on what they need the most work on.

adding_mixed_numbers

subtracting_mixed_numbers

multiplying_mixed_numbers

fractions_divide

 

In Language Arts students should read this selection and answer the questions with reasoning.  This is also a good quick review of atmosphere.

atmosphere5th

 

Next, on a separate piece of paper, they should do the following with the above selection:

1.  Summarize it
2. define the genre of the selection
3. pick one paragraph, and identify the type of text structure used in it.  Is it sequential?  problem solution?  cause effect?

 

 

Not too much tonight I don’t believe.  Remember to read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Interview day!!

This morning was so much fun! (Unfortunately we didn’t take a picture when everyone was dressed up – my bad)

Many students came to their interviews prepared, and dressed to impress.  Some students went to Mr. Zoller, others went to Mrs. Lecorchick, still others went to Mrs. Frazier, Mrs. Woodlief, and many teachers around the school.   The response from the teachers was overwhelmingly positive.  They enjoyed taking with the students and said the students did admirably.   I hope this was an exciting and worthwhile experience for everyone.

 

This took up much of our morning, but we still had some time for quick language arts rotations.  Tonight students should finish two stations from this week.  If they spent their center time wisely, these should be close to done already:

Inferences3

Genre4

 

In math we are really working a ton with bar models.  We did quite a few exercises together as a class, in groups, and then individually.  Tonight students have some problems that they should work out using bar models.

BarModels1

 

If they are confused they should look back at their math journals, where we did a lot of problems together as examples:

BarModelExamples

 

 

Tomorrow is quiz day, so make sure you look back at your notes concerning genre, bar modeling, operations with fractions, and forces!

 

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

What a great day!  We got to negative 8 today thanks to the students being absolutely fantastic this morning.

 

Tomorrow is interview day!

Students have been assigned an interview time with a teacher or administrator tomorrow.  They have written this time down and are responsible for showing up on time.  They are encouraged to dress to impress, and also to prepare themselves for the interview by knowing all they can know about their chosen field, and prepping answers to these three questions that each interviewer will ask (they might ask more though):

1.  Tell me about yourself
2.  Why do you think you would be a good fit for this position?
3. Do you have any questions for me?

We talked about how good answers for these types of questions should be geared towards our career.  Don’t say you hate doing math if you want a job as an engineer.  Likewise don’t say you can’t stand dogs if you want a job as a veterinarian.  If you want a job working with computers, explain your experience with computers.  Be positive, and make sure your answers highlight your good traits!

 

In language arts we talked again about genres.  In our center work we have been making some mistakes when assigning sub-genres.  We seem to be pretty solid on fiction vs. non-fiction, but can get mixed up after that.  For instance just because a book about hurricanes is scary, doesn’t make it horror.

 

In math today we started talking about bar modeling with groups.  We found that sometimes if we are very careful and precise with our bar models, we can find the answer to somewhat challenging word problems quite easily.  For example we did this problem in class today:

BarModelProblem

 

We then talked about multi-step problems and how we would continue to use our steps (what is the question asking?  What do I know? draw a picture – solve) to help us solve them.  Tonight students need to work backwards, and take two sets of equations, and write a word problem to go with each set.  They will be writing a multi-step word problem that would be solved by these series of equations:

number 1:

10 – 1/2 =

9  1/2 –  1  3/4 =

 

number 2:

1/5 + 1/2 =

3 – 7/10 =

 

At the end of the day, we had just enough time to finish watching Room on the Broom that was a leftover from our ice cream sandwich party.  Darn power outages!

 

 

so, tl;dr

Come up with good responses for your 3 basic interview questions:

1.  Tell me about yourself
2.  Why do you think you would be a good fit for this position?
3. Do you have any questions for me?

dress to impress!

 

Come up with two multi step word problems that would be solved by these sets of equations:

number 1:

10 – 1/2 =

9  1/2 –  1  3/4 =

number 2:

1/5 + 1/2 =

3 – 7/10 =

 

and read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

A much better day!

This morning we got a good bit of language arts and math review in.  We are a mere 4 weeks from the end of the quarter and EOGs……jeez.  Can you believe it?  We will be doing a ton of review and just a few new concepts in the upcoming weeks.

 

In math we’re still talking about the operations, and how we visualize them.  When we are working with word problems we are asking ourselves these questions (and answering them on our paper!)

1.  What is the problem asking?
2. What do I know?
3. Draw a picture!
4. How do I solve given what I know?

Tonight students should come up with 4 new word problems that are solved by these equations:

1.  3 + 3/4
2. 3 – 3/4
3. 3 x 3/4
4. 3 ÷ 3/4

And they have to be about ice cream sandwiches!

Speaking of ice cream sandwiches, we also had our ice cream sandwiches today.  It was pretty delicious.

 

In Language Arts students have some centers from last week to finish.  If they spent their time at centers last week well, they should have little left to do.

Inferences5

FigLanguage

At the end of the day we lost power in the school for the better part of 2 hours.  This was a tad problematic, as we normally do everything through the Smartboard.   Somehow we managed.

 

Honestly not that much tonight.  As we get heavily into our review, that will change drastically.

 

remember to read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Happy Monday!

 

Today we were a bit….off.  Had some issues with staying on task and making sure we cut our side conversations off when appropriate.  Tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully it will be MUCH better!

 

This morning we took a look at all of the different things we have worked on this quarter.  We then went over our quizzes from Friday, and our quizzes from this quarter.  Students gave themselves interim grades (that Mr. Potter checked to make sure they were what he would have given them!).  For the *most* part, students were honest with themselves.  They saw their grades and they saw the work they had done, and were capable of saying “I understand this” or “I don’t understand this yet”.  This is a very important skill that students will need throughout their lives as they assess their own understanding and plan their own learning.

Tonight students should get this interim signed.  Also please use it to record their reading log, as we ran out of time to hand out the new ones at the end of the day.  Sorry about that.

Last week students purchased an ice cream and movie party for our class using the tickets they had saved up.  So, today we had ice cream cones and watched “Stick Man”.  Tomorrow we’ll take another little break and watch “Room on the Broom” and have ice cream sandwiches!  I was really impressed last week with how they had pooled all of their tickets to purchase something for the class as a whole.

We then went over what different mathematical operations really mean.   One problem we are running into when we are examining word problems is we aren’t quite sure about multiplication and division yet.  So today we talked about some things that operations can represent:

Addition ( X + Y ):  is about combining things.  Finding a total, a sum. If I put X and Y together, how much are they in total?

Subtraction ( X- Y): is about finding the difference between two numbers.  How much bigger (or smaller) is X than Y?  It can also answer if I took Y away from X, what would I have left?

Multiplication ( X * Y): is about repeated equal groups.  Repeated addition.  X groups of some number Y (or Y groups of some number X)

division (X ÷ Y): is about splitting some value into equal groups. It can also be repeated subtraction.  Or how many Y are in X?

 

Tonight students have 4 equations to look at.  They should then write a word problem that would be solved by the given equation.  Make sure you look at what each equation represents, and that you go through your steps when solving them!

1.  5 + 1/3
2. 5 – 1/3
3. 5 x 1/3
4. 5 ÷ 1/3

 

 

 

so, tl;dr

A very easy night I believe….

Get your interim signed (and use it as a reading log as well!)

Write a word problem that would be solved by each of these, and then solve them using our steps:

1.  5 + 1/3
2. 5 – 1/3
3. 5 x 1/3
4. 5 ÷ 1/3

If you’ve forgotten them, the steps are:

1.  What is the problem asking?
2. What do I know?
3. DRAW A REPRESENTATION to figure out how to solve
4. Solve, using what I know

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Meeting in 10 minutes, so today will be pretty quick, sorry!

 

Today was chock-full of practice!

We practiced operations with fractions.

We practiced identifying genres.

We practiced word problems.

We practiced dancing in a conga line (seriously, we did)

 

It was a good day!

 

In language Arts, students have some practice identifying genre.  Our two big genres are fiction and non-fiction.  Our sub-genres are almost too many to list.

Genre1

 

In math we are going over how to perform operations with fractions.  We took a LOT of notes today:

MathNotesMay19

 

Tonight they have some word problems to do:

WordProblemsMay19

 

AND some operations drills:

MathHomeworkMay19th

 

 

Tomorrow is quiz day – fraction operations, word problems, physics, genres, and making inferences.  Check your notes, and be ready.

And read!!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

This morning we had some representatives from SunTrust come out and talk to the students about saving.  When we start working on our budgets next week, I’m hoping the students will remember today’s talk!

 

This morning we talked again about making inferences.  I’m happy to say many of the students are becoming quite adept at this.  What we need to work on next is being able to make inferences without being asked specifically.  We need to form a habit of it.

Tonight students have some more passages to read and some inferences to make.

InferencesMay17

They also have some figurative language to figure out.

FigLangMay17

 

In science today we did some more work with friction.  We pulled our social studies books across all kinds of surfaces: our desks, our carpet, the hallway, even outside on the sidewalk.  We used some rubber bands and measured how far the rubber bands stretched before the book started to move.  We then took all of our data and put it up on the Smartboard.  Tonight students should look at their data and respond to this:

Order the surfaces from most to least friction.  How do you know this?

FrictionData

In math we only had time today to talk do an example and talk again about how we should work through word problems.  Continue to ask yourselves these questions:

What is the question asking?

What do I know?

How do I answer the question given what I know?

 

We didn’t have time to copy down our homework word problems, so the kids lucked out!

 

 

so, tl;dr

a lite load tonight:

Make some inferences

InferencesMay17

identify some figurative language

FigLangMay17

Order the surfaces from most to least friction, and explain how you figured that out.

FrictionData

 

and read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter