Lately...

Here is what we have been up to lately in fifth grade... 

During Morning Meeting, we have been working on editing a message that I write to the students each morning. We are working on skills that will help us edit our writing during Writer's Workshop. 

We created our own bar model word problems to share our learning of how to solve word problems using the bar model method. Our word problems are now displayed in the classroom.

We are very excited to be buddies with Miss Blake's first and second grade class. We have met with Miss Blake's class twice and are having so much fun getting to know our little buddies. Using a puzzle piece, the student found their buddy match. We have spent time playing with our little buddies on the playground and filled out a getting to know you worksheet to see how many things (if any) that we have in common with our little friends. We are looking forward to building community and friendships with Miss Blake's class. We are already planning on meeting our buddies this week to read with them.

Last week Ms. Redman, an AmeriCorps fellow, came into our classroom to do an activity with our class. She read a book, Paulie Pastrami Acheives World Peace by James Proimos. We learned that you can make the world a better place by doing small things such as being kind to those around you and helping others. Ms. Redman posed the question to the students "Imagine a world where ...". The students were asked to share an idea of what their perfect world might look like.  

Here is our Imagine a World ideas that now reads like a poem. We will be revisiting our ideas using them as a springboard to engage in service-learning projects that will make our school and community a better place. 

Learning and working together takes cooperation and team work. To encourage the students to work together, we have a Smarty jar in our classroom. When the students are great listeners, work hard, and make positive, proactive choices we add a Smarty to the jar. Once there are 24 Smarties in the jar (1 for each student), the students earn a Cooperation Celebration. On Friday, the students voted to spent our first Cooperation Celebration in their pajamas. They also voted and chose to bring in a small, electronic device to use during the afternoon. The students have worked extremely hard during the first month of school and most definitely earned some free time! It was a wonderful, relaxing way to end a busy week!