L’SHANA TOVA

Gail’s fifth grade is learning about the elements of literature in our reading of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. It has been a little bit of a struggle for many to compose ideas and answers about literary devices such as “allusions,” and foreshadowing but, with much discussion and example, students are getting the idea of how to write about literature and understand the author’s craft in a work of fiction. We are also learning how to write paragraph answers to questions and fully explain answers with examples and discussion. It’s just the beginning of the year and for many this is a demanding and hard process. But, soon, every student will be skilled in analyzing literature and writing about it.

We are also continuing to learn about inventions and technology and doing interesting activities to encourage the students to problem solve for invention ideas.

Almost everyday, we are  editing and proofreading   paragraphs about real historical figures. These paragraphs have many errors of punctuation in them. Students take their red pencils and correct and edit the paragraphs. We are also  working on writing stories about being granted three wishes. We discussed the importance of creating a setting in the story as well as using dialogue and description to “show” us the story in a real and vivid way.

In math, we have been studying place value and multiplying by 10’s, 100’s, 1000’s, etc. as well as dividing by these numbers. Students are being taught estimation strategies for greater understanding of math. We are having our first math test on Tuesday.  I wish you all a healthy and happy New Year filled with blessings.

Back To School Night

I really enjoyed meeting those of you who came to Back to School Night. I feel so positive about the year ahead. I will do everything I can to give your child a happy and productive year. The evening was so filled with lots of information that I forgot to talk about birthday parties. Please try to invite all the children of your child’s gender or, all the children in the class. By 5th Grade, social status becomes a serious issue. It is very hurtful to any child to be left out of a birthday party. We are a small school and everybody knows what is going on. It is hard to keep birthday parties a secret and the impact of leaving a few kids out effects the dynamics of the classroom. We have only seven boys and nine girls in our class. If your child is a girl, for instance, and you invite 6 girls, for example, you are leaving out two girls. The hurt and pain to those two girls will be great. Including all the girls, in this case, will teach your own daughter the value of compassion and inclusiveness. 

We need some volunteers. Would anyone be willing to do the Scholastic book orders for our class? Nobody signed up to volunteer for our Thanksgiving cooking activity and for the day of our Thanksgiving meal. The cooking will take plave on November 19, 8:30 to 11:30, and we also need help for the next day, November 20, 10:30 to 12:30. It’s a lovely opportunity to be with the children and enjoy this fun time.

These last few days of school our children have been making oral presentations about the invention they chose as one of the most important in the world. They have had to explain why the invention they chose has been so important, as well as describe the invention and gives it’s inventor and date of origin. Then they place their information card on a graph which has been divided up into seven categories. They must decide under which category the invention should be listed. Some inventions are hard to limit to one category. For instance, Is the light bulb under “convenience” or under “tool”? What about the computer? It could be under “communication,” “tools,”  “health and safety,” etc.  All this led to lively and thoughtful discussions about the role technology plays in our lives. Some of the more unusual invention choices students made were: antibiotics, written laguage, steam engine and roller skates.

In writing, students took red pencils and “proof read” and edited their own stories that they wrote last week. Much discussion and instruction arose concerning when to make a new paragraph. What is a paragraph? How do you know when to start one? It’s not easy for them to “get it,” yet. But we will be revisiting this process over and over again this year.

In math, we learned and reviewed rounding numbers to the nearest 10,  100,  1000, etc. in order to estimate the answer to a problem. Estimation and place value are foundation blocks for mathematical understanding.

On Friday afternoon, our class lit the Shabbat candles and made the brachot and the Kiddush in front of the whole school assembly. It was lovely! Thank you for letting me work with your wonderful children.

Second Week Has Begun

We are already in the thick of learning and working. Students have written poems and a short story. They have created and performed skits to demonstrate the origin of certain inventions. For instance, one group portrayed how ice cream cones were invented. Another group portrayed how several inventors made telephones   but the Supreme Court gave the patent to Alexander Graham Bell. Ask your child how velcro was invented. We started our math program today. We began by talking about place value and the importance of how many zeroes are in a number and the location of the decimal. In literature, we discussed the authors use of names to hint at personality traits. We also talked about the society of the 1830’s and how class divided people more than it does today. Most students in the class identified themselves as being middle class. We talked about how different a society might be when there is a small middle class, a large working class and a small privileged upper class. Our book, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, uses class differences to enhance the plot. All the books we will read together as a class have, not only strong girl and boy characters, but are rich in historical background.

Finished Our First Week

On Friday we began writing stories about our worst (or Best) day at school. We talked about the role of the narrator in a story and how the narrator must draw us into the story. We also began reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. In this novel, the Narrator warns the reader not to read any further if the reader cannot take strong ideas and difficult circumstances. We discussed how the author has used this “warning” as a “hook” to make the reader want to read on.  In history, we looked at the geography of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. We began to learn about why the late 15th and 16th centuries saw an explosion of exploration and colonization of Europeans in the Americas.