WHAT'S UP IN 5E?: ...ON TO OCTOBER!!

We're in to our second month of Grade 5 and we're still excited and enthused about what each day of learning has to offer! As you can see from my last post (the podcast practice), my learning is continuing as well. I had a lot of fun playing with podcasting on my "dayoff" this Friday and think it would be a great way to have the students sharing their learning. It's like having your own personal radio show! It's a hoot! So enough about me...here's what 5E has been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Our first book report for the year is almost complete. The students Canadian Book Floats look fantastic! The class was buzzing with energy and creativity on Wednesday as they began their creations. We will be having our Canadian Book Parade on Monday so everyone's float must be completely finished first thing Monday morning! The parade is an opportunity for the students to share their books (and floats) with their classmates. Our floats will be on display in the bookcase across from the library beginning Oct.10th - Oct.24th. Be sure to drop by the school to check them out!
This week we have also begun our novel study of The Birchbark House. We've only read the prologue and first chapter but I could overhear the students talking about their predictions and feelings about the book in the hallway already! This will be our main focus in Language Arts over the next month and the majority of the work will be done IN CLASS!
On Wednesday, I had the students hand in their Daily Reading Logs as we discussed our TARGETS for their logs as a class. Every day in school they are given time to silent read and respond in their logs. Only one entry is required for homework (on the weekends) and requires your signature. Thank you for supporting our reading program this year!

MATHEMATICS:
Our unit on Data management is almost complete. The "Favorites" double bar graphs look great! We celebrated our hard work with a Smartie graph activity on Thursday to review what we've learned about making a simple bar graph and drawing conclusions from the data. Next week we will be discussing first and second hand data and preparing for a quiz on this unit for Friday, October 10th!
Problem Solving also began this week. The students were introduced to the key strategies we will be focusing on throughout the year and the 5 main steps to follow when solving any problem. Our first problem comes from a Mathematical Folktale called "One Grain of Rice". As I explained to the students, this problem is just a fun introduction to problem solving...we will never work with numbers this large in our 'regular' problem solving program! Have your child explain what the story was about and what problem they needed to solve! We will be going over the answer as a class on Monday!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We reviewed our understanding of history and historical events. To emphasize their understanding of DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES when learning about history, I had the students work in groups to research the famous historical event...Christopher Columbus's discovery of 1492. Each group was given a different source of information and asked to find the 5W's of this historical event. We shared them as a group to observe the different perspectives that each source portrayed of that event. We found a few surprises!
This weekend, the students are asked to look at their own personal history and choose one key event and write down the 5w's. After, they will be asking YOU (their parents or siblings) to write down their account of that event. Finally, you will examine the similarities and differences of perspective in everyone's version of the same event. You can find this assignment in your child's S.S. duotang entitled "Oral History". We will be sharing our "findings" on Monday.

SCIENCE:
Our study of Nutrition this week had us looking at the new vocabulary we will be exploring throughout this unit and viewing our favorite Science guy, Bill Nye as he shared his knowledge of Nutrition in a funny DVD! We discussed and made some suggestions as to how we can make our "Healthy Snack" time after morning recess a bit "healthier". Thank you for your support!
Next week we will be examining Canada's Food Guide more closely and creating collages of the four main food groups.

FRENCH:
We are continuing to review the "everyday" vocabulary that the students will be using in our French classes all year. They have been working on a personal "pictionary" of terms to use as a reference throughout the year.

ART:
The students' Group of Seven reproductions look remarkable! I hope to have them all finished by Friday and up on display for your viewing pleasure. Our next Art activity will be looking at the "darker side of 5E" (I'll keep you in suspense with that hint!).

OTHER: