TOMORROW Thursday, September 1st is our first APTT meeting.  I would really love an opportunity to talk with you about our students and their progress.  APTT gives us a great chance to look at data and talk about student achievement.  I hope everyone is able to make it.  It begins at 5:30 pm in our classroom, room 139.

 

Sorry, this has to be super short as I have a meeting to make:

 

We are working a lot with decimals.  The kids seem to be getting it, which is encouraging.  We ran out of time before I could explain/hand out the homework.  Lucky for everyone!

 

In Language Arts we are talking about character traits and creating characters for our writing.  We discussed how every little bit of detail can help our readers to understand our characters.  Tonight students should create a character.  They should describe how the character looks, acts, and other details.  This should be something of their OWN CREATION.  Not a cartoon character, not a character from a video game or a book.  Yes all works are at some level derivatives of others, but let’s do our best to come up with something of our own on this!

 

We took a look at a character from Thy Mysterious Benedict Society as an example.

CharacterExample

CharOrganizer

 

Other than that, they should simply finish their vocabulary squares.  They should have done 5 already, so that just leaves 5 more for tonight.

Quite a lite load honestly.

read!

Sorry for the quick post.

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

A reminder: This Thursday, September 1st is our first APTT meeting.  I would really love an opportunity to talk with you about our students and their progress.  APTT gives us a great chance to look at data and talk about student achievement.  I hope everyone is able to make it.

 

This morning we continued our talk about decimals.  We discussed  again how decimals are just another way to describe fractions in base 10.  We have been breaking out the play money and doing a lot of our work with decimals using the manipulatives.  Honestly students have been doing work with decimals for years when they use money, just nobody told them about it.

Tonight students have a set of decimal numbers to look at.  They should look at each underlined digit and give me THREE ways to describe the value of that digit.

For example if I had 3.62

The digit 2 is underlined. I can describe its value in these three simple ways:

2 tenths, OR 2/10 OR 0.02

It’s important students cement this idea that everything to the right of the decimal point is describing a fractional value that is smaller than 1.

Decimal_Place_Value_Aug30

We also talked about how we can solve some of the more challenging multiplication problems on our homework and quizzes lately.  Essentially we are solving for unknown values in equations when we have an answer and some known values.  It’s pretty neat stuff, and should be some interesting logic puzzles for the students.  We went over strategies for this today and took some notes in our math journal.  We then copied down four of these types of problems.  Tonight students should finish these in their math journal.

Unknowns_Aug30

 

In Language Arts we started discussing our Greek and Latin roots notebook.  This is a book that students will be using to record our weekly vocabulary work.  Students received a list of vocabulary words today based on the root ‘ped’.  Tonight, they are responsible for creating vocabulary squares for the first five words.  We did the first word as an example:

VocabSquare

Finally, we did some observations of our seeds.  These things are getting big quickly, and we hopefully will get them transplanted fast.

 

 

so, tl;dr

define some decimal values:

Decimal_Place_Value_Aug30

Solve for unknowns:

Unknowns_Aug30

Finish vocab squares in vocabulary notebook:

VocabSquare

 

and read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

Happy Monday!

A reminder: This Thursday, September 1st is our first APTT meeting.  I would really love an opportunity to talk with you about our students and their progress.  APTT gives us a great chance to look at data and talk about student achievement.  I hope everyone is able to make it.

 

I love Mondays.  So much to do, and a week full of possibilities.  By Friday when we’ve only gotten half of what I planned to do finished I’m ready to have a breakdown, but Mondays are great!

 

So this morning we did some talk concerning decimals.  We discussed how really ‘decimal’ numbers are just ways we can represent fractions in base 10.  We talked about how to name decimal numbers, and different forms of decimal numbers.

 

For example, the idea that .3 = .30

If we thought of this using money, it’s like saying 3/10ths of a dollar (3 dimes) is equivalent to 30/100ths of a dollar (30 pennies).

 

Tonight students have some problems to work out using the distributive property of multiplication over addition.  Later this week we will move on to some work with decimals.

DPOMOAHomeworkAug29

 

We then read some more of The Mysterious Benedict Society.  Things are starting to get interesting, and next chapter we’ll learn about what big dangerous thing is happening that Mr. Benedict is worried about…

 

This week we will be focusing quite a bit on character traits, and how authors define a character by their actions, thoughts, and feelings.  Normally a character’s actions will tell us quite a bit about them.  For instance in the book we are reading, Reynie and Constance display VERY different behavior.  That behavior encourages us to like Reynie, and note quite so much Constance.  In this way authors can actually attempt to control their readers’ emotions.  Pretty awesome, or creepy, depending upon how you look at it.

 

In science, we are still talking about producers, consumers, decomposers, and all that jazz.  Many of our seeds germinated over the weekend!!  We will be transplanting them outside even sooner than I had thought, which is fantastic.  Before you know it, we’ll be eating some vegetable that we grew ourselves.

 

Tonight students have some questions about energy flow within ecosystems to answer.  They should use their science textbook to answer these questions.  Each question they answer should be accompanied by the page in their textbook where they found that information.

EnergyFlow

 

so, tl;dr

Complete some multiplication using area models:

DPOMOAHomeworkAug29

Answer some questions about energy flow, and make sure you find the information in your textbook, and mark the page number next to each answer on the sheet:

EnergyFlow

 

and read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

 

 

 

 

Please note students received a good load of paperwork for parents tonight.  Please take a look at the sheets and fill them out if you would.  Also included was information about our first APTT session, which is next Thursday the 1st of September.  I would love to see all parents there, especially those whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting face to face.

 

How is it already Wednesday?!

This morning was a whirlwind of area models, multiplication, and a bit of talk about decimals.  Thankfully many students remembered that when we talk about numbers to the right of the decimal point, we are really just talking about fractions.

Tonight students should continue their work with area models.  The bottom two problems here are a *bit* tricky.  Think about how you solve problems using the distributive property of multiplication over addition.  If you know some values, I’m pretty sure you can figure out the unknowns!

DPOMOA Aug 24

 

In language Arts we talked about character traits for just a little bit, and then got into some discussion about reader’s response.  Essentially our reader’s response writing should be our current thinking about whatever we are reading.  What are you wondering?  Are you curious about what happens next?  Are you perplexed by the actions of a character?  Did something happen in the book that upset you? That worried you?

Students will be recording these thoughts in their reader’s response journals.  We also copied down some good starters for our reader’s response:

ReadersResponsePrompts

 

Tonight students should pick one of the prompts, and write a response to what they are reading.  They may either respond to The Mysterious Benedict Society, which we are reading together, or they may respond to the book they are currently reading on their own.

 

Students then read their Tina/Timmy stories to each other.  They did a WONDERFUL job with these, and had a good time sharing them.  Most students were able to guess what character trait their partner was aiming for, which shows they did a good job writing a character that displays that trait.

 

 

In science we got a lot more done with our seeds.  Each group finished up planting their seeds, and then we made some observations about the seeds and our actions so far.  We recorded these in our science journals.  Some of our seeds even looked to be germinating already.  I was quite surprised by that, and the students were delighted.

Finally at the end of the day we went into the computer lab where students logged into IXL.  IXL is a program that has been purchased by our school to assist children with math, language arts, and science.  Students log in, and they can work through sets of problems and topics that are relevant to 5th grade.  They can also go back to other grades and even ahead for enrichment.  It will be slowly worked into our daily rotations.  Students are welcome to use IXL at home if they would like.  Our login page can be found under the ‘General Links’ tab above.

 

 

so, tl;dr

Work with some area models

DPOMOA Aug 24

Write a response to what you are currently reading, or to The Mysterious Benedict Society.  Use one of the prompts we wrote down in our Reader’s Response Journal.

ReadersResponsePrompts

 

and please read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

My apologies this must be quick, as I have an appointment to keep.

 

Today we did more work with area models and the distributive property of multiplication over addition.  We have 4 problems to do tonight, and as always, we have examples:

(The problems are at the bottom of the page)

Aug23AreaModelDPOMOA

 

In language Arts we kept discussing character traits, and how we can find and use evidence from the text in order to define character traits.  I’m still very impressed with the character traits that our students are coming up with.  We have some very expansive vocabularies in the room.

We then spent the afternoon planting our first seeds.  Students planted Okra, Lettuce, Carrots, Squash (Zucchini), cucumbers, Turnips, and tomatoes.  We are trying out two different types of soil, to see if one works better than another.  We will be tending these seeds for the next week or so until they germinate, and then transplanting them outside in little gardens.  Then we will be taking care of them, measuring our progress, harvesting our crops, and then eating them.

As it usually does, this took a good amount of time, and we didn’t have time to get to any of the students’ other assignments.  Lucky them!

 

tl;dr

Do these 4 problems just as the examples:

Aug23AreaModelDPOMOA

Tonight is a catch up night.  Students should make sure they have everything done, especially last night’s Tina/Timmy story.

 

Read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

Happy Monday!

 

We did a LOT of review this morning.  We went over our quizzes from the last two weeks, and took a look at some issues we are having.  Please make sure you ask your student how they have been doing on their quizzes.  I will be sending progress reports home next week.

 

After all of our review, we took some math notes and started talking about how we can take difficult multiplication problems, and break them down into easier to do problems.  Maybe something like 9 x 8 is a little difficult for us to do in our head if we haven’t memorized our multiplication facts.  So we do our best to break it down into simpler sub-problems:

9 x 8 = (5+4) x (4+4)

We then talked about how to distribute multiplication across addition, and area models that help us to visualize this.

9 x 8 = (5+4) x (4+4)

= (4×4) + (4×5) + (4×4) + (4×5)

= 16 + 20 + 16 + 20

= 20 + 20 + 10 + 10 + 6 + 6   (we can use different forms of our numbers to make addition simpler here as well)

= 72

We took some notes on this of course, and tonight students have 4 problems to do just as they were done in the notes.  The problems are at the bottom of the notes:

Aug22AreaModelsNotes

 

In Language Arts we started talking about character traits.  We made the distinction that character trait does not mean feelings.  Almost everyone can be happy, sad, or angry.  Unless that is how a character acts exclusively, we normally don’t use those as character traits.  Students came up with a large list of character traits on their own, and I was very impressed with the level of vocabulary I heard.

Here are the notes with some of our words we came up with.  These notes aren’t finished yet, but some students asked that I put them up here to help them with tonight’s assignment:

Aug22CharacterTraits

Tonight students should pick a character trait.  They will write a story about our character Tina or Timmy that exhibits that character trait in an extreme manner.  Tina/Timmy should be going to buy a video game.  They shouldn’t come right out and say that Tina/Timmy is <insert character trait>, but they should try to make it obvious from their actions in the story.  I have included the prompt and my example that I shared with the students.  This should be like a little riddle where the reader should be trying to think of the character trait.  Can you guess mine?

Aug22TimmyTinaStory

 

And before we knew it, we were out of time 🙁

 

So, tl;dr

4 multiplication problems done JUST as our examples (on graph paper)

Aug22AreaModelsNotes

Write me a story about ______ Tina/Timmy buying a video game

Aug22TimmyTinaStory

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

Tomorrow is Early release – school dismisses at 12:30.

 

 

This morning we talked a good deal more about base 10, and about different ways to represent a number.  Many students had some issues with this problem from the last few days homework:

750 = (__ x 10)

This question is asking how many 10s it would take to make 750.  Many students mistakenly answered 5, as they were simply looking at the tens place in the number 750.  However there is an equal sign in there.  That means that the entirety of the left side of the equation must be equal to the entirety of the right side.  That will only happen if we are making the entire number 750 out of tens.

We can also think about it this way:

750 -> we can think of this as 750 ONES

If we look at the tens place, we can also look at it, and think….

750

75 TENS

so, the missing value in our equation turns out to be:

750 = 75 x 10

 

I would highly recommend looking at these problems from the last few days.  Tomorrow’s quiz looks VERY much like this…

 

Tonight in math students should finish their word problems from yesterday.  Again I want to see each problem worked out in steps.

ProblemSolving_Notes

AddSubWordProblems

 

In Language Arts we started up some reader’s response journals today.  Students will be responding to prompts in here, and also writing about what they choose to read on their own.  Today we did read an article about Easter Island and the Moai, and students got some questions and a prompt.  This is *not* homework, but they may work ahead on it if they like.

I’ll post more about these reader’s response journals later, but they will become a weekly assignment as students are asked to respond to what they have read.  The entire point is to get students thinking about what they have read so they can become better readers AND better writers.

 

In science we continue to talk about ecosystems.  Tonight students have some short readings on ecosystems and some questions to answer:

EcosystemsAug18

 

so, tl;dr

Answer the rest of your word problems using our five steps

AddSubWordProblems

Finish your science readings and answer some questions:

EcosystemsAug18

 

wow, that’s not much at all, is it?  Great.

 

And read!

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

MClass assessments are almost done! Hooray!

 

This morning we talked a good bit about how we will solve word problems in this class.  Essentially math is about how to solve real world problems.  As such, almost all of the math the students will see from now through college will oftentimes come at them in the form of word problems.  We need some strategies to tackle these.

When we are presented with word problems we will focus on these steps:

1.  What is the question asking?
2. What do I know?
3. Draw a picture or model to illustrate what is happening
4. Explain how to solve and then solve
5. Check the answer.  Is it reasonable?

We took some notes and did an example as well:

ProblemSolving_Notes

 

Tonight students have a few word problems to do.  They should be done EXACTLY like we did in our example and following our steps.  They only need to do problems 1-5 on this sheet.

AddSubWordProblems

 

In Language arts I have been VERY impressed with how well students are doing with settings.  I see real thought and effort going into their work.  I also see students putting good effort into explaining their reasoning, which is key.

Tonight students should read some more passages and infer the setting of each passage:

SettingAug17

 

Today we also started watching a neat little video about the Easter Island Moai, and the things scientists are doing to figure out how a group of people without stone tools or even the wheel managed to carve and move these gigantic statues.  It’s amazing what people are capable of.

We looked at our comma work from yesterday, and students corrected their mistakes.  They will be turning that sheet in tomorrow, and it will be checked for correctness. This should be a gimme grade if students were paying attention and checked their work in class. We also got a new comma worksheet that happens to talk about Easter Island!

EICommasAug17

We also did some more writing today and students should have at minimum a start to a story.  If they haven’t finished their story yet, they should do that tonight.  Tomorrow I expect to see a good rough draft in their writing journal.

 

In science students did some reading about biomes and plants.  Does your student know what a producer is?  They should!

Tonight students should finish these readings and answer the questions.

ScienceReadingAug17

 

At the end of the day the 5th grade teachers had a meeting to go over APTT data and talk about the skills we will be focusing on in conjunction with parents this quarter.  First APTT is September 1st by the way, and I hope to see everyone there.

 

so, tl;dr

First 5 problems on this sheet.  Follow the steps we came up with for solving word problems, and the example in your math journal.

AddSubWordProblems

Finish your rough draft of your story

Put commas where they belong

EICommasAug17

infer some settings

SettingAug17

Answer some questions about plants and the tundra biome

ScienceReadingAug17

 

And as always, read read read

 

Have a good one,

-Mr. Potter

 

Hooray I’m back!

This morning we talked a lot about why it is important to be able to break numbers down and use them to make math easier.

For example let’s look at this problem:

4 x 6

Maybe we’re not quite sure about the answer to 4 x 6…so let’s break it down into:

(2 + 2) x 6

Now we can do (2 x 6) + (2 x 6), which is a much easier problem.  This is exactly why we are learning about breaking down numbers into different forms.

 

After this we did a series of rotations just like yesterday.  While this was happening I was getting our MClass assessments done.  Hopefully we can get these all taken care of in the next few days.  Tonight students have some activities to finish just like yesterday.  If they used their time wisely, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had VERY little of this left to do:

Base10Sheet3

 

I was very impressed with how well most students did with the settings activity yesterday.  Being able to answer questions about the setting when the author doesn’t come right out and say it shows good infering skills.

Settings_Aug16

We had an interesting conversation about commas and the oxford comma, and how for whatever reason, in the U.S., we always put our punctuation inside our quotation marks.

Comma_Practice

 

Finally we read some more of the Mysterious Benedict Society today.  Things are already starting to get really weird and mysterious for Reynie Muldoon.  In the book today Reynie was given an opportunity to cheat on a test that he very badly wanted to pass.  The test was nearly impossible for him, but he still tried his best without cheating.  Ask your student if they see any lesson in that!

 

Not much today, so I don’t think we need a tl;dr.  Don’t forget to read and get your reading log signed!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter

My apologies for the late update, and more apologies cause this is going to be short as I am literally sitting in a meeting as I type this…

I had to take a trip to the doctor today and get my stitches looked at.  Good news!  I’ve been cleared to go back to work!!

So today the students had a ton of rotation to do with the substitute, Mrs. Alford.  Their homework tonight is to finish the work they started in school.  If they used their time wisely in class, they should have VERY little of this left to do:

Punctuation_Aug15

 

WordLaddersAug15

 

Settings_Aug15

 

Base10Sheet2

 

 

So tonight, just finish those up, and read!

 

Sorry for the short update and having to miss some school today!

 

Have a good one,

 

-Mr. Potter