APTT and Parent-Teacher Conference Info at the bottom of the post!

 

Today students are very lucky.  They received a day of no homework as a reward for their work on Boosterthon, and they chose today to take it.  The ONLY thing they have to do tonight is their reading log.

 

We started off our day with a multiplication problem that students solved by breaking into smaller parts and distributing.  They are getting MUCH better at this, and we now need to work on avoiding silly mistakes, and double-checking our work.

In Language Arts we talked more about main idea, and how it is the main point, the important idea, the essence of a passage.   We looked at some more reading passages and used our main idea and supporting details organizer to identify the main idea.

In Science we took another quick vocab quiz and looked up some more vocabulary words.  In many cases students understand how a process works, but lack the vocabulary to explain or express their understanding at an appropriate level.  Science Vocabulary is something we will work on throughout the year.  By the end of the year half of their science journal will look like a dictionary.

In math we talked again about addition and subtraction, and how they are inverse operations.  This means you can undo one with the other.  7 – 4 = 3.  Which means 3 + 4 = 7.

We also looked in detail at the operation of subtraction, and how it is about comparing numbers.  This talk led us to a misconception that many students had:

If I subtract one number from another, I will end up with a smaller number.

This misconception is quite common at this point.  It means students are thinking of subtraction simply as ‘take-away’.  If you think in that way, it is quite difficult to understand that I can absolutely get a larger number using subtraction.  Since subtraction is about finding difference, and comparing numbers, we can definitely get larger numbers when doing that.

 

so, tl;dr

Free day today as boosterthon reward

Read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

 

 

APPT and Parent-Teacher Conference info:

Academic Parent Teacher Teams are an opportunity for teachers and parents to work together on the same set of skills in order to progress students.  The meeting is the evening of the 17th, which is next Thursday.  I would very much appreciate seeing everyone there.  I will probably bug you about this.  Apologies in advance!

I have also set up a sign-up genius for parent teacher conferences.  There is a link at the bottom, and also up at the top under ‘general links’.  The majority of the times up right now are are either 7-8 in the morning, 4-5 in the afternoon, or 5-6 in the afternoon.  If these do not work for you please let me know.  If you give me a time that works for you, I will make it work for me.  If you don’t sign up for one of these, I will probably also bug you about that.  Apologies in advance!

 

Parent Teacher conferences

There is a repeat of the info about APTT and Parent Teacher Conferences at the bottom of this post.  Please read it if you have not yet done so.

Another good day!

We did many more small groups this morning dealing with main idea, and Ms. Hertling came and assisted us as well.  We are really trying to get specific with our details.  This will also help us later when we need to find evidence and other specific information to support our answer/our opinion.

Tonight students have two pieces of language arts homework.  First, they need to answer some questions about the reading from last night.  As always, each answer should come with reasoning.  This means a sentence that explains why they picked their answer.

BattleBotsQuestions

We also talked a bit about Constance

In Science we took a quick quiz on the vocabulary from yesterday, and then introduced 5 new words that students should define tonight:

Scavenger

Producer

Consumer

Decomposer

Parastite

 

In math today we had a long conversation about addition and subtraction.  We talked about how addition is combining.  We then talked about how subtraction helps us with two types of problems:

Finding the difference

AND

Taking away

I asked students to please think about how and why we use subtraction for two completely different types of problems like this.  For instance I could say

I had 4 candy bars and Hsa had 7.  How many more does Hsa have?  He has 7-4=3 candy bars.

I could also say

Hsa has 7 candy bars.  I took away 4.  How many does Hsa have left? He has 7-4=3 left

 

These problems are VERY different, and yet we use subtraction to solve them both.  Why is that?

Tomorrow we’ll talk more about this!

 

so, tl;dr

Another lite day!

Answer questions about Battle Bots with reasoning!

BattleBotsPassage

BattleBotsQuestions

Tell me about Constance!

Blank char sheet

Define these words in your science journal: scavenger, producer, consumer, decomposer, parasite

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

 

 

APPT and Parent-Teacher Conference info:

Today students took home information regarding our Academic Parent Teacher Team meeting.  The meetings is the evening of the 17th, which is next Thursday.  I would very much appreciate seeing everyone there.  I will probably bug you about this.  Apologies in advance!

I have also set up a sign-up genius for parent teacher conferences.  There is a link at the bottom, and also up at the top under ‘general links’.  The majority of the times up right now are are either 7-8 in the morning, 4-5 in the afternoon, or 5-6 in the afternoon.  If these do not work for you please let me know.  If you give me a time that works for you, I will make it work for me.  If you don’t sign up for one of these, I will probably also bug you about that.  Apologies in advance!

 

There is APTT info and parent teacher conference info at the bottom of the post.  Please read it!

 

Tuesday already!  The students came in obviously refreshed this morning, and we had a really fantastic day.

 

This morning our school counselor Ms. Carter came and talked to us about middle school and our future.  She gave us a very inspired talk about the importance of responsibility and taking responsibility for our own learning.  She talked with us about how school is an opportunity to learn and better yourself, and that it is our responsibility to do the best we can.

We then talked about main ideas and summaries, and how they are similar and different.  We talked about how a main idea is the most important idea – basically what the story is about.  It is often able to be communicated in a single sentence.  We looked at some newspaper/Time for Kids headlines/subheadings and noticed that those are often in fact the main idea of the selection.  Students then practiced filling in a main idea graphic organizer with Ms. Hertling using Time for Kids.

Tonight, students received a little story about battling robots.  They should fill in a main idea graphic organizer for this selection.

BattleBotsPassage

Organizer example:

MainIdeaOrganizer

 

Next we took a look at our plants and they are getting HUGE.  Ask your student how big their corn or their cucumbers were today.  We definitely have some stalks that are reaching 80cm.

In Science we will be working a bit on vocabulary this and next week.  We took a quick pre-test on this last week, and the results were … less than optimal.

Tonight students wrote down 5 words in their science journals.  Their job tonight is to define these five words using whatever resource they deem reliable.  Their science textbooks, their parents or siblings, even the internet is fair game here.  The five words they should define are:

predator

prey

carnivore

herbivore

omnivore

Some students may already know the definition of some or all of these.  Even so, they should look up a definition to ensure their own ideas are correct.

 

Finally, we spent some time reviewing our area models and took our quiz we missed on Friday.  This quiz had some puzzle type questions in it utilizing the distributive property of multiplication over addition.  This will let me know who is really getting it, and who needs some more clarification.

 

so, tl;dr

Read about battle bots and give me an organizer identifying the main idea, supported by three details!

BattleBotsPassage

MainIdeaOrganizer

 

Define these 5 words (even if you think you know them, double check!)

predator, prey, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore

 

And as always, read!

 

-Mr. Potter

 

 

 

APPT and Parent-Teacher Conference info:

Today students took home information regarding our Academic Parent Teacher Team meeting.  The meetings is the evening of the 17th, which is next Thursday.  I would very much appreciate seeing everyone there.  I will probably bug you about this.  Apologies in advance!

I have also set up a sign-up genius for parent teacher conferences.  There is a link at the bottom, and also up at the top under ‘general links’.  The majority of the times up right now are are either 7-8 in the morning, 4-5 in the afternoon, or 5-6 in the afternoon.  If these do not work for you please let me know.  If you give me a time that works for you, I will make it work for me.  If you don’t sign up for one of these, I will probably also bug you about that.  Apologies in advance! 🙂

Conference sign-up

I’m back!  Also, TOMORROW IS EARLY RELEASE.  We have a modified morning schedule and students will be dismissed at 12:30.

 

Mrs. Alford said the students were pretty good yesterday.  I was very happy to hear this.

 

Unfortunately right after I read a favorable note from Mrs. Alford, I was met with 14 students who did not do their homework.  This was very disheartening.  I understand that I did not update the website yesterday, but Mrs. Alford was very clear with what was homework, as was evidenced by the 9 students who turned it in without a problem.  As a consequence students who did not have all of their homework spent their lunch time in the classroom finishing said homework while they ate.

 

This morning we had our fun run!  The kids ran their little hearts out, and were absolutely soaked by the end.  Almost everyone in the classroom got a full 35 laps in!

I will be sending home envelopes to collect final pledges tomorrow, or you can also send in your pledge via the www.funrun.com website.  Thank you so much to everyone for helping with this.  We really appreciate the outpouring of support we received.

 

We spent what little time we had this morning doing language arts rotations.

We are focusing on finding the main idea and writing summaries for short passages.  Tonight the students have another short passage to read and summarize (on a separate sheet of paper).  The summary should focus on the who/what/where/when/why of the passage.

mammoth_fossil_found_passage

There are also some questions to answer, and these should be accompanied by REASONING:

MammothFossilQuestions

When I say reasoning, I mean a sentence that often begins with “I know this because….”.  Then, I would like to hear why the student picked the answer.  They should be as specific as possible.  For instance:

I know this because it’s true. (This isn’t so great)

I know this because it said so in the passage.  (This is kinda ok…)

BUT

I know this because it said so in the 3rd paragraph. (THIS is better)

 

We have also been working on our biome brochures , and I must say I am very impressed with what the students are doing so far.  I look forward to seeing their finished products.

 

Next we measured our plants, and some of them are getting HUGE.  I expect to see them begin to blossom any day now, and the vegetables will soon follow.

 

Finally we talked again about breaking difficult problems into smaller, easier to do problems.  We also talked about how if we are multiplying 3-digit numbers, we are now breaking problems into even more pieces.  Tonight students have 4 math problems to do, and as always there is an example!

DPOMOA Sep 3

 

so tl;dr

summarize this passage:

mammoth_fossil_found_passage

answer these questions with reasoning:

MammothFossilQuestions

Do these math problems (with area models)

DPOMOA Sep 3

 

and read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

 

EARLY RELEASE TOMORROW!

Fun Run in just 2 days!

 

If you haven’t yet, please go to www.funrun.com and register.  We have our actual Fun Run on Thursday!

 

This morning we spent a good amount of time on our writing and doing individual writing conferences.  A good friend of mine, Ms. Hertling, came in to help us.  Ms. Hertling is an accomplished teacher, who has taught around the globe.  She spent the bulk of her time teaching English at the high school level.   She has agreed in her retirement to come in and help us with a few things this school year.  She will be here often on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  She was very happy to read the students’ writing, and had tons of great things to say.

We got about half of our writing conferences done, and we’ll try to get the rest done tomorrow and Thursday.

We also talked about writing summaries and finding the main idea of a text.  We are often asking “who did what?” “When?” “where?” and “why?” in order to figure out the main idea or to summarize a text.

 

To practice thinking about these things, students tonight have a short article to read and summarize.  There are also some questions that go with the article.  They should answer these with reasoning, explaining their answers.

Device May Help Blind People See Passage

DeviceQuestions

 

We then talked again about finding information in texts.  We looked at our biome paper from yesterday and discussed what kind of keywords we looked at in order to find specific information in the index/glossary of our science textbooks.  The students did a pretty good job with this, and I was happy with their ability to pick out keywords from questions.  These are very important skills to have as they do research and are responsible for finding specific information on their own.

Tonight students should finish the back of the sheet.  They should include page numbers where they found the information for each question.

BiomeReview2

 

We then again talked briefly about our area models and multiplying multi digit numbers by breaking them down into smaller parts.  Tonight students have four problems to do in this manner.  Again, please refrain from talking with students about the standard algorithm for multiplying multi-digit numbers.  We are not interested in that at this point.  We are interested in getting students familiar with how multiplication is distributed across addition, and understanding how we break difficult problems down into small ones.  The standard algorithm will come later, and it will make much more sense because of the work we have already done.

Sep1DPOMOA

 

Finally we spent some time in the computer lab working on our biome brochures.  We talked about the different things we can do in word with text boxes, fonts, and all of the different options word processing software offers.  For many students this is overwhelming, but as we do more and more projects on the computers, they will become accustomed to it, and we will have less students erasing all of their work by accident (Which is something that happened today!).

 

so, tl;dr

Summarize this article, and answer the questions with reasoning:

Device May Help Blind People See Passage

DeviceQuestions

 

Answer the questions on this sheet using your science textbook, and include the page numbers where you got the information:

BiomeReview2

 

Do these problems using area models:

Sep1DPOMOA

 

And as always, read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

P.S. I have an appointment tomorrow, so I will be absent from school.  We will have a substitute, Mrs. Alford.  She is a retired teacher from Lockhart (who used to teach 5th grade even).  The students are in good hands, and I know I will come back and hear good things from Mrs. Alford.

See you Thursday!