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

Friday was SO MUCH FUN!

 

We watched some movies, and had a really fantastic field day.  I have some great pictures I can’t wait to send home at the end of the year.  If you volunteered and took some pictures, I would love for you to send them to me so I can add them to our class folder.

 

This morning we talked about steps for solving word problems.  It’s important we are thinking about what’s going on in word problems, and reasoning out how to answer the questions asked given the information available.  We also need to be checking our work – did we actually answer the question asked?

We’ll be doing a lot of work on this, as essentially math in life is a word problem. (as will be all the math tests they take from now on!)

Students did an example today in their math journals, and tonight should do another problem (in their math journals) in the same way.

FractionWordProblemStepByStep1

Students should also finish pages 62-63 in their math coach.  This is more division review.

 

In science we talked briefly about friction once more (again emphasizing that friction often works against the direction of movement) and watched a short video.  Tonight students have some questions to answer about the video.

The video

Bill Nye Friction Video

 

In Language Arts we are getting much much better at making inferences.  Tonight students have some more short passages to read, and some questions to answer.  These are essentially little puzzles where they have to piece together information from the passage in order to infer what is going on.

Inferencing_May16

 

 

This week for the My Success Project, students will be finishing up their resumes.  The template is in their google classroom.  There is also a quick video and some examples to watch on the my success page here.

Next week based on the strength of their resume students will be given interviews with staff members.  They are encouraged to prepare for these interviews and to dress to impress on interview day (Next Thursday May 27th).  Then based on these interviews they will be given a job that will be a big part of the final piece of this project.

 

 

so, tl;dr

Pages 62-63 in math coach.  Also word problem:

FractionWordProblemStepByStep1

 

Watch video again if necessary, fill in some questions:

Bill Nye Friction Video

 

Make some inferences:

Inferencing_May16

 

Finish your resume by the end of the week!

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

The homework is just reading tonight!

 

We had a VERY long day at the Durham Bulls ballpark today.  The students had quite an authentic ballpark experience complete with hot dogs, chips, crowds, and disappointment (the bulls lost!).

 

Tomorrow is field day…..

Recommendations:

Wear comfortable clothes and shoes.

Bring a bottle of water.

Bring a change of clothes (you might get dirty or wet)

 

And make sure ALL of your homework for this week is done!

 

Tonight students should just read, and make sure everything from the week is finished.

 

Have a good one!

-Mr. Potter

(who is going to go crash right now)

 

Field trip tomorrow!!!

 

We will be leaving as soon as the buses arrive tomorrow (between 9-9:30), so PLEASE make sure you are here on time.

Because tomorrow is the field trip and Friday is field day, we have a lite load tonight and tomorrow.  I expect 100% turn-in tomorrow and Friday!

This morning we did a LOT of math review and practice.  We only have 7 weeks of school left, and we need to ensure we have a very solid understanding of decimals, fractions, and the basic mathematical operations.  We still have a small number (4) students who need to get their math facts memorized.  This needs to be a priority for them at home.

Tonight students should do pages 60-61 in their math coach book.

This is division review.  Students should check their answers with multiplication!

 

In Language Arts we talked some more about inferences, and I was happy to see most students enjoyed last night’s homework and put some real thought into the questions.

This week students should be finishing up their career and education research.  The education and career timeline in their google classroom should be finished by Friday.  By that time they should be able to answer basic questions about their chosen career and college.  Links are still here.

 

Please make sure you come dressed tomorrow in comfortable clothing, and on time!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter