We are so happy to be back in the swing of things.  We truly missed your children and are excited to be back at school.  We have been so busy this past week.  Read all about what we've been up to. 
 -Alites

Making Meaning

By Madeline, Sanjyot, and Adam

This week we explored fascinating sharks during Reading Workshop. We filled out a KWL chart. That stands for what we know, what we wonder and what we learned. Next, we wrote a question about sharks on a post-it. We looked through shark books to find the answer. When we found our answer, we wrote it on another post-it and stuck them on a shark poster. We learned something new and we have a new poster for our classroom wall!

Math

By Rachel, Steven, and PJ

            This week in math we have been learning about long division. At first, we learned how to divide by 1 digit divisors and then by 2 digit divisors. We also learned a trick to help us remember what the steps are to long division. It is D=dead M=mice S=smell B=bad R=really. The letters stand for Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring down and Repeat. We are still getting the hang of doing long division and these tricks are helping us learn how to divide!

Scarecrows

By Brian, Jared, and Sakina

We made scarecrows on Fun Friday! Mrs. Aloe and Mrs. White brought in baby clothes and costumes, and we brought in newspaper. We stuffed the clothes with newspaper, and tied them with rubber bands. It was fun crumbling newspaper to put in the clothes, and some groups used special heads like SpongeBob balls and Jack-o-Lanterns.  The scarecrows were out in the hallway. We had lots of fun making scarecrows!

The Election 2012

By Stephanie and Trevor

This year Barack Obama and Mitt Romney went face to face in the presidential election. Barack Obama won the presidency. He got 332 electoral votes and Mitt Romney got 206 electoral votes. Barack Obama’s Vice President is Joe Biden.  In class we watched commercials and CNN Student News which was all about the election. We also colored a map which showed the candidate that won each state. We had so much fun learning about the election!

Tuck Everlasting

By Caitlin, Logan, and Michael

We are enjoying our read aloud Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit. It is about a girl who is lonely and wants to run away.  She’s in the process of running away when she runs into a good looking teenager named Jessie Tuck. Jesse is drinking from a spring. Winnie wants a drink but Jesse is immediately opposed to the idea of her drinking from the spring.  It turns out that that spring freezes your appearance in time. It ensures that you can never die. There is also a man in a yellow suit that overheard the revelation of the spring. We are eager to read more.

Writing Celebration

By Becca, Austin, and Yunseo.

This month we published our first piece of writing in fifth grade. We wrote personal narratives. The writing celebration gave us the opportunity to read each others writing. We had a great time commenting on other people’s stories. We wrote what we liked about each story. We have been working on our personal narratives for the past month!  After people read our pieces, we felt like our hard work had paid off! 

Worldly Wise

By: Emilie, Kyra, and Daniel

          Wordly Wise is a program that helps us build our vocabulary. We have a Wordly Wise test each week on Friday.  Each week we get 15 vocab words to study. Everyday we get Wordly Wise homework in our Wordly Wise Workbook. On Monday, we are introduced to the words and review the definitions.  On Tuesday, we look at the parts of speech for each word. On Wednesday, we get a packet with sentences. Each sentence has a missing vocabulary word. We use the text clues in the sentence to fill in the blank correctly. Some of the words this week are abolish, escalate, monstrous, translate, and character.  We have noticed that Wordly Wise improves both our vocabulary and writing.