Happy Monday!

 

Mondays are always a little loopy, as our schedule is all kinds of backwards due to the 5th grade teacher meeting at the end of the day.  So we have specials at the end of the day, and our morning is just crammed full of learning.

We started this morning going over COPS, which stands for:

Capitalization

Organization

Punctuation

Spelling

We got a hand-out to help us with editing our writing.  We then went through and highlighted each piece of punctuation in our paper.  This should help us look at each sentence individually and think about whether each sentence makes sense.  It will also help us find our run-on sentences.

Tonight students should edit their work by going through this checklist.  It should be very obvious whether or not they actually went through this checklist tomorrow.

EditingChecklist

 

Next we went over some biome vocabulary and talked about how we can find information in a textbook.  We looked at our science book’s glossary and index and saw that we could easily find information by starting there.  Students should continue to do this by answering some questions tonight.  They should answer these questions and include what page of their textbook they found the information on.  Answers without page numbers will not be accepted!

BiomeReview

We then spent some time in the computer lab doing Lexia and then some biome research.  Students are into the part of their research where they need to find specific information about the organisms in their chosen biome so that they can construct a food web.  They have to look up individual animals and plants to find out who eats whom.

Finally, we talked about using our area model to work with multi digit multiplication.  We can take a problem like:

14 x 16

and turn it into some much simpler problems:

=(10 + 4) x (10 + 6)

=(10 x 10) + (10 x 6) + (4 x 10) + (4 x 6)

=100 + 60 + 40 + 24

=224

Again this is *not* about the easiest method for performing multiplication (although conceptually this is a pretty good one), it is about understanding how we break things down, and it will eventually be used to explain how the standard algorithm for multi-digit multiplication works.

Tonight students have 3 problems to do like this.  As always, there is an example!

Aug31DoubleDigitDPOMOA

 

so, tl;dr

Edit your paper! Using this checklist! If you don’t, Mr. Potter WILL KNOW!!

EditingChecklist

Find some information in your textbook and answer some biome questions.  Write the page number where you found the information!

BiomeReview

Use the area model to answer these mutli digit multiplication questions!

Aug31DoubleDigitDPOMOA

 

And as always, read!

Jeez that was a lot of exclamation marks.  If I were using that checklist, I would know that I used wayyyy too many exclamation marks. 🙂

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Tomorrow is Friday, which means….QUIZZES!!

We will have a reading comprehension quiz tomorrow, a new quiz on food webs, a quiz on breaking down difficult multiplication problems into easily manageable parts, AND a multiplication fact quiz.  It will be a busy day!

I highly recommend taking a look at your food web notes, and thinking about our discussion today about what happens when organisms are removed from ecosystems due to various reasons (natural disaster, human interference, etc).  For math, if the distributive property of multiplication over addition is still giving you problems I also recommend looking at our homework over the last few days, especially the examples.

 

We started our day with a little bit of writing time.  We have spent a little bit of time each day writing our stories, and tomorrow students will be turning in a rough draft.

They have three parts to turn in with their draft (these should all be in their writing folder):

character map  Blank char sheet

story map StoryElements

setting write-up Setting Organizer

And of course, their actual draft.

I’ll take a look at these over the weekend and we will start making our short storybooks next week.

 

In science we had a long discussion about how organisms being removed from an ecosystem can dramatically impact the other organisms in the ecosystem.  We made a food web for the Eagles and Peregrine falcons we read about the other day, and then speculated on what likely happened to the small bird, snake, and rodent populations when the large birds went almost extinct.

It is important that we develop an idea that organisms within an ecosystem are connected, and have an affect on one another.

 

In math we did some math centers and small groups.  We will be incorporating small groups and math centers slowly as we make sure we are ready for it.  Giving students the responsibility of working independently is a big deal, and we will practice quite a bit more until we are doing this regularly.

Tonight students should finish their multiplication flash cards.  They should go from 3 x 1 all the way through 9 x 9.

They should then study these because we have a quiz on them tomorrow!

 

 

so, tl;dr

a pretty easy night (if you’ve been working diligently up to this point)

Complete your short story rough draft and be sure you have your graphic organizers finished as well:

Blank char sheet

StoryElements

Setting Organizer

Tomorrow you will simply turn in your writing folder with all of this in it.

Finish your multiplication flash cards and study them (because we have a quiz tomorrow!)

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

P.S. Tomorrow is also our celebration for our gold medal!  Students may wear pajamas/bring a stuffed animal if they would like 🙂

 

Unfortunately we had only six people turn in their summaries for the reading last night.  As such, the great majority of students today spent their lunch in the classroom eating and finishing their homework.

We had a talk about how the only way that we get better at something is by practicing.  If we are not putting in the practice, we are not going to improve.  Thus, not doing the practice is not an option.

In Language Arts we did some more writing and had some conferences about our stories so far.  The students have some great ideas for their stories!

We next introduced some vocabulary words.  We will be working with Greek and Latin roots a good deal this year.  Students will receive lists of words, and we will do some word sorting, story writing, and other activities with them.

PedList

Tonight students should write a sentence using each word, for a total of ten sentences.

We talked about how each word on the list is a noun, and what sentences with nouns look like.

Something like “I biped him” or “He is very biped” doesn’t exactly make sense.  However, something like “I am a biped” makes sense as biped is a noun.

 

Next we had another little pep rally about the boosterthon fundraiser.  We will have a little pep rally each day before specials where students will watch a video of children around the world playing sports, and what sportsmanship looks like in other countries.

 

We then caught up on some of our Mysterious Benedict Society as we have fallen a tad behind and the students were insistent that we find out what was happening with our student secret agents!

 

Finally, we talked more about how we can turn difficult multiplication problems into simpler problems by breaking them down into pieces.  Mathematics is all about breaking things down into easier to understand and perform operations, and understanding this from an early stage is important.  We started doing a bit more complex problems, and multiplying three digit numbers using our area model/distributed property of multiplication over addition type strategies.  Tonight students have 5 problems to do in this way (and there is of course an example as well):

The fifth problem is a thinker!

DPOMOAAug26

 

so, tl;dr

A lite night tonight:

Write a sentence for each of these vocabulary words.  Use the word *correctly* as a noun in each sentence

PedList

Do the following problems by breaking them down into easier problems and using area models as we have been:

DPOMOAAug26

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

 

P.S. If you didn’t get a chance, please check out the funrun post in yesterday’s update and register on funrun.com.

Woohooo! Boosterthon!!

 

Today students received a boosterthon information pamphlet, as well as their interims.  Please make sure you take a look at these, and please get the interims signed and back to me.

 

So this morning we talked quite a bit about reading closely for comprehension.  We didn’t do as well as I would have hoped on our last reading test, and I’d like to make sure that students are using all of the tools at their disposal in order to understand a text.

We read a passage on our own and then with a partner.  We identified an important detail in each paragraph and then looked at those to identify the main idea of the passage.  Tonight students should write a paragraph summarizing the selection.  They should make sure they include the details they have identified.  We came up with some sentences together:

Scientists took Bald Eagles from Wisconsin to Manhattan.  Peregrine Falcons were close to being extinct from the use of DDT, but the government banned DDT in 1972 and Congress passed the endangered species act.

They should add their other details tonight to create a good summary.

Big Birds, Big City Passage

 

They also got a compare and contrast sheet, and they should fill that out tonight.

Compare and Contrast

 

Next we talked some about biomes and ecosystems.  Students are still a bit unsure about the differences between the two, so we took some notes on this.  Essentially ecoSYSTEMS describe the SYSTEMS within a biome.  An ecosystem is oftentimes smaller than a biome.  A biome is a large geographical area with similar climate/organisms.  We usually define 5 major biomes (desert, tundra, grassland, forest, aquatic), but these are further divided into more specific biomes.

Next we had our boosterthon pep rally.  Our boosterthon is our fun run fundraiser for the school.

This year we will be putting our money raised towards new playground equipment.  Essentially students will ask family and friends to make pledges for each lap they will run on our fun run day.

You can normally expect students to run anywhere from 30-35ish laps.  So if you were to give a pledge of $1 per lap, expect to be donating approximately $30-$35 dollars.  There is also an option to make a flat donation.  This means you can also simply pledge a flat $10 or whatever you would like.  Students got a pamphlet with more information today, so please take a look at it tonight.

If you get a chance, please head to www.funrun.com and register.  When registering you will provide your details.  Once you log in, you will register a participant (someone who makes a pledge).  You can either enter our school code (614-431) or you can do a lookup for Lockhart Elementary.  Then you fill in the information for what was pledged.  Thank you to those of you who choose to participate.

 

Finally, we talked some more about breaking multiplication problems down into more manageable pieces.  We started doing things like 7 x 13.  We can break this down into:

7 x (10 + 3)

= (7 x 10) + (7 x 3)

= 70 + 21

= 91

 

You will notice this is how the standard multiplication algorithm works (except the standard algorithm has some shortcuts thrown in).  Again, the entire purpose of this is to get students to understand how multiplication is distributed across addition, and to help them understand how to break down problems into easier problems.  Please do *not* simply teach your child the standard algorithm to answer these questions.

Tonight students have 5 problems to do.  Here is an example, and the problems:

DPOMOA Aug 24

 

 

so, tl;dr

Finish summary of the following passage, including details from each paragraph:

Big Birds, Big City Passage

Do the following problems, exactly as the example:

DPOMOA Aug 24

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

Jeeeeez why can we not get anything done on Mondays?!

Just a heads up: we had a bit of an incident at the end of the day that really threw some things off.  As such I did not get a chance to hand out interims or the information regarding parent teacher conferences.  That will go home tomorrow.  My apologies.

So we started our day talking a good bit about our stories, and specifically the setting.  We talked about how we use our senses to understand the world around us.

We see things

We hear things

We smell things

We taste things

We feel things

When we are writing and describing our setting, these are the things we should be thinking about.  Are we describing what we want our reader to see? to hear?  to smell?

We took out a graphic organizer, and then made sure that we were describing these things in our story.  We read them to our partners, and they tried to pick the things out.

 

Next we went out and measured our plants.  We had a LOT of growth over the weekend, and they are looking really good.  I just hope tonight’s storm doesn’t wash us out again 🙁

 

Finally, we talked about multiplication, and how we can break down multiplication problems into easier sub-problems.  We did this using area models and the distributive property of multiplication over addition.  This is the property that essentially states:

6 x 7 =

6 x (4 + 3) =

(6 x 4) + (6 x 3) =

24 + 18 =

42

 

Tonight students have 4 problems to do just as we did an example:

DPOMOA Aug 24

 

Please take a look at the example and do the other problems in EXACTLY the same way.  I understand you might know that 7 x 6 is 42.  That is not the purpose of this exercise.  The purpose is to understand that you can break these problems down and understand how multiplication is distributed across addition.

This is the same way that you do problems like 45 x 62.  First you do 2 x 5, then 2 x 40, then 60 x 5, then 60 x 40.

Please ensure students work through these problems and follow the example.

And then of course it was already time to go.

 

so, tl;dr

a lite day – just do these 4 problems as per the example:

DPOMOA Aug 24

And read!!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Tomorrow is Taki and Chips day!

For our celebration for our silver medal, students may bring in some takis/chips/a snack and we will have a little bit of game time at the end of the day tomorrow.

We spent a very long time discussing word problems today.  While much of the class is getting it, some students are still having trouble visualizing what is going on within a story problem.

I can’t stress enough how important it is that students have a definite plan in their head before they tackle a word problem.  This is why we are asking students to go about word problems in a certain way, and to get them used to going back and forth between equations and word problems on their own.   Students should be asking themselves these questions:

What is the question asking me?

What information do I have?

What can I figure out based on the information I have?

Tonight students have a multi-step word problem to create on their own.  The following set of equations should be the way in which the problem is solved:

1 + 2 =

5 + 3 =

8 – 5 =

So it looks like we are first combining 1 of something and 2 of something else.  Then combining 5 of something with 3 of something.  And then either taking 5 away from 8 of something OR comparing 8 of something to 5 of something…….

 

Our science discussion was filled with vaults today!

I told the students that they were going to be locked into a vault after a nuclear war with their group.  Each group member would be allowed to bring one thing of their choice.  The vault has access to sunlight, clean running water, and a basic bathroom.  The vault is airtight.

On the first round, students all chose video games or ipods/tablets, etc.  I then acted out what would happen to each unfortunate group as they ran out of oxygen.

In the next round students brought plants (yay!). They didn’t run out of oxygen quite as quickly, but eventually the plants died off for some reason……

Eventually some groups picked up on the fact that they would need a whole slew of organisms to survive in their vault.  They would need something to produce food and oxygen for themselves.  They would also need something to break down waste and other things back into nutrients, so that the plants’ soil would not eventually become barren.

Tonight students should answer this question:

What ended up being important in order to survive in the vault?  What things did the groups who survived bring?  Why were those items important?

 

We also talked about food webs, and made some more of those in class.  Tonight students should make their own food web.  The food web should be realistic, and made up of real, currently living, organisms.  It must contain at minimum:

2 producers

2 consumers

2 decomposers

 

We also began writing some stories today.  Students had previously come up with a character of their own design.  We had used a character trait chart to design what type of character they would be.  We had also made story maps to help us begin our writing.

Today we talked about how establishing a setting is an important start to a story, and helps immerse our reader in our world.  It also helps them to create a picture of what is going on in their heads.

We wrote a quick introduction paragraph describing the setting of our story.  We then broke into pairs and did TAG with our partners:

Tell something you liked

Ask a question

Give a suggestion

Tonight students should RE-WRITE their setting paragraph, trying to improve it based on their own ideas, or based on the questions/suggestions they received from their partner.

 

SO, tl;dr:

Write a multi-step word problem that would be solved by the following equations:

1 + 2 =

5 + 3 =

8 – 5 =

 

Answer this question about our vault exercise:

What ended up being important in order to survive in the vault?  What things did the groups who survived bring?  Why were those items important?

 

Draw a food web that contains two producers, two consumers, and two decomposers

 

Re-write introduction that establishes a setting for their story.

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

TOMORROW IS PICTURE DAY!!!

 

Yay our classroom is clean again!

 

So we finally got our library squared away.  We came up with our own way of categorizing our non-fiction books after a trip to the library to see how Mrs. Wall organizes her non-fiction books.

It feels much better now that our students are not constantly under the threat of being buried under a teetering pile of books.

Next we continued our discussion of comparing and contrasting things.  Tonight students should take their Tale of the Ngiri and the Tortoise and the Hare story, and compare and contrast the two.

We then spoke a LOT more about producers and consumers.  Some students have gotten quite confused, and have the idea that consumers are only those animals that eat other animals.

We had the discussion that  everything  that eats something else (doesn’t produce their own food, like producers), is a consumer!

We also watched a neat video on some other types of producers that *don’t* use photosynthesis to produce their own food.

Tonight students have a sheet where they need to identify producers, consumers, and decomposers.  Hopefully with some practice and some discussion tomorrow, we can clear up some misconceptions.

Food Chains Aug 19

 

We then read some of the Mysterious Benedict Society and found out that Mr. B has an evil twin! BUM BUM BUUUUUUUUMMMM!!!

 

Finally, we shared our word problems from last night.  The students did an excellent job with this, and I was happy to see them capable of taking an equation and working it into a word problem.  Essentially they were able to take a number sentence and translate it into a real world situation.

We analyzed the language that we used in our addition word problems vs. our subtraction word problems.  We found that addition word problems tended to use similar language: phrases like ‘together’ and ‘altogether’ and ‘both’ or ‘more’ or ‘combine’ were prevalent.

Based on this, we decided that we can define addition as combining things, and when we see things being put together and being combined, we are seeing addition.

 

We had a similar discussion with our subtraction problems and found that subtraction can be TWO possible things.  It could be take away:

I had 5 toys and Tommy took two of them.  How many do I have now?

5 toys – (take away) 2 toys = 3toys

I have 3 toys now

OR it could be the difference between two values; comparing two values:

I have 5 toys.  Tommy has 2 toys.  How many more toys do I have than Tommy?

5 toys – (the difference between) 2 toys = 3 toys

I have 3 toys more than Tommy

 

Tonight students should use this newfound knowledge to write a new word problem.  This time, it is a two step word problem.  They should look at this following set of equations, and write a word problem that would be solved by these two equations.

31 + 14 = 45

45 – 10 =

So in their word problem they should be combining two values (31 & 14) and then taking away something from that combination, or comparing it to something else.

Understanding what the operations actually do and being able to go back and forth from an equation to real world ideas is extremely important.

 

 

SO, tl;dr

Compare and contrast the Tortoise and the Rabbit with the Tortoise and the Antelope

Identify the producers, consumers, and decomposers, and answer some questions:

Food Chains Aug 19

Write a two-step word problem that would be solved by the following equations:

31 + 14 = 45

45 – 10 =

And as always, READ READ READ!!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

P.S. TOMORROW IS PICTURE DAY!!

 

Our class is a ridiculous mountain range of books!

 

So this morning we took apart our class library.  We talked about how libraries are normally organized, and how our class library *was* organized by author’s last name, but has somehow strangely become a jumble of books since the beginning of the year 😉

So we set to work organizing it.  We took out some books that have gone past the point of repair, and did a great job organizing and adding some new books.

However this took longer than Mr. Potter anticipated, so we just kind of stopped halfway through, and went on with our class day.  We’ll finish it tomorrow morning, but for the time being our class is a hilarious booksplosion.

 

First thing we did today was go over last night’s homework.  The students are getting MUCH better at these word problems.  The entire point of the exercise is to get students in the habit of thinking about HOW to solve the problem instead of just grabbing the numbers they see and smashing them together.  It is also to encourage students to check their answer to make sure they are actually asking what the question asked.

Tonight things go a little bit backwards.  Here are two equations.  Students should write their OWN word problem that would be solved by each equation.  They should then go about solving it in the manner we have been.

36 + 48 =

25 – 7 =

 

So next we took some time going over what a plot synopsis, or a summary looks like.  Many students struggled with this last night.  On their homework they put something along the lines of “Tortoise and Hare have a race” for their plot synopsis.  That’s……..not exactly what we’re looking for.  Today we fleshed out that idea, and talked about what makes an event important to a story.  We ended up re-writing our summaries for the two stories we read so that they included all of the important events.

 

We then talked some about producers, decomposers, and consumers.  Most of us correctly understood that without one of these types, ecosystems would begin to collapse.  This is because energy is transferred in a cycle, and without one of these types, that chain, that connection, that cycle becomes severed.

This all leads to our next little mini topic: food webs and food chains!

Food chains and Food webs describe how energy is transferred within a group of organisms.

Tonight students have a simple handout talking about food webs that they should read and some questions to answer.

Food Web

I then had a meeting to attend, so the students went to the computer lab with a substitute.  They had some questions to answer:

What is a biome?

What types of biomes are there?

The students will be beginning a biome brochure project soon.  They will have to create a brochure about the biome of their choice, just like a travel brochure.  They will have to research their biome and tell us all about it.

 

so, tl;dr

Not much to do tonight!

Write a word problem for each of these equations.  Solve it in the manner we have been:

36 + 48 =

25 – 7 =

Read and answer these questions about Food Webs:

Food Web

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Note:  Ident-A-Kid pictures are tomorrow, and Picture day is Thursday!

 

Today we had a bit of an unfortunate experience.

So each year I give students a bit of a ‘test’.  I ask students to talk together in an online setting (In this case a chat room) and ask them some questions to get them started.  I do this to gauge their understanding of how to properly interact with others on the internet.

This time, our class chose to take many of their comments to inappropriate places.  We had a discussion about what constitutes quality posting and discussion, and what constitutes what I like to call ‘noise’.  Unfortunately most of our comments turned to noise very quickly.  As such we are going to practice some more before we are given freedom on the website.

 

So in Language Arts we are still discussing how to compare and contrast characters and stories.  Tonight students have two selections to read.  One is the well known Tortoise and the Hare story from Aesop.  The other is a little less known story from the Ngiri people entitled the The Tortoise and the Antelope.  Students should write down the traits displayed by the characters, the setting, the plot, and the theme of each story tonight.  Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my digital copy of this, so I do not have one to upload here.  My apologies!

 

In Science we took a look at our plants, and noticed the warm weather is NOT being kind to them.  This might be a very rough growing season.

We talked some more about producers, consumers, and decomposers, and this led to a lot of questions as to what would happen if an ecosystem suddenly lost one of these three.

Tonight students should be thinking of and answering these three questions (on a sheet of paper):

What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its producers?

What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its consumers?

What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its decomposers?

 

The important part of each answer should be the ‘why’ or the ‘because’ that follows your initial answer.  Please put some thought into this.  We have said over and over that ecosystems must maintain a balance.  Why?  What would happen if that balance was suddenly gone?

 

 

In Math we are still talking about how we solve word problems.  It is imperative that students get into the habit of first asking themselves what a word problem is asking.  Students OFTEN miss questions because they make assumptions about what a question is asking instead of simply reading and making sure.  Next students should identify what information they have, and formulate a plan of how to go from the information they have to the information the question is asking for.

 

Tonight students have 7 more word problems to do.  This time, some are multi step problems.   We did one as an example:

Aug17Example

 

Students should finish the rest:

Word Problems Aug 17

 

 

so, tl;dr

Read and fill out the character traits, plot, setting, and theme of The Tortoise and the Hare and The Tortoise and the Antelope.

Answer these questions:

What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its producers?

What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its consumers?

What would happen if an ecosystem were to lose all of its decomposers?

 

And do these word problems (just as we have been doing them up until now!)

Word Problems Aug 17

example: Aug17Example

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter