A lot to be Thankful For

5J really does have a lot to be thankful for. We have gotten so much accomplished so far this year, and there are a lot of people that have played a major role in our success. Besides all of the students’ hard work, I am very thankful for all the parental support in 5J. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you do. In addition to the at-home support, the in-school help has been great! I am so grateful for all the parent volunteers. Not only that, but I know the school has asked a lot of the parents lately. With the classroom supplies, the science materials, and the canned food drive, it is very obvious how generous the 5J parents are. I can’t thank you enough.

I would also like to thank the students for their hard work week in and week out. We definitely worked hard last week. In Reading, we read Summer of Fire in the Harcourt Series, and we had our test on Tuesday. We spent a lot of time working with nonfiction text aids. As I discussed in the last blog, in order to increase comprehension, it is very important to take advantage of those text aids. Too often students feel that it’s not important to focus on captions, charts, and bolded words (for example), but that is a habit we are going to break. We are definitely able to identify and interpret a variety of text aids, now we just need to make it common practice when reading nonfiction texts. The class did awesome meeting the demands for this story, and I expect similar results next week. We will be reading Oceans and pinpointing the main idea and supporting details in texts (another vital component of comprehension). Thanks again to the students for all their hard work. If you keep it up, it will all pay off in the long run.

Besides just completing the Harcourt selection, we also finished our read aloud book The Giver. I think a lot of the students can attest that it was definitely a higher-level book. However, read aloud is a good opportunity to expose students to more difficult books they might not read on their own. We just started another book that I think the students will really get into. We are reading the first book in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It isn’t quite at the same level as The Giver, but it is a great series of books and I would like to get the students hooked on them like we did with Roald Dahl.

Lately, we have spent a lot of time finishing things up. After over 3 weeks of going through the writing process, we have finally completed our memoirs. As I mentioned in previous blogs, we spent a lot of time in the revision stage. This is because I want to make sure the students understand that this is the most important part of the writing process, and revisions can always be made. As a matter of fact, I’m sure if Lois Lowry had the chance, she would make a ton of changes to The Giver. I have already gotten through a number of the memoirs and I think the extra time has really made a difference. However, don’t get too used to this. As a matter of fact, we spent a mere two days working on a 5 paragraph essay on something we are thankful for. I am very excited to read the rest of the memoirs, as well as the 5 paragraph essays.

Besides just finishing up our two writing pieces, The Giver, and a Harcourt selection, the 5J Math class also concluded unit 4. Although some students did not receive the scores they would have liked, I think we can learn a valuable lesson from this test. It is important to take your time and make sure you don’t make little mistakes. There is no doubt in my mind that every student has a strong grasp on the content. The problem with the test was that we were just rushing through it. Long division is one of those things that you need to be very meticulous about, or one little mistake will make a big difference. As a class, we have talked about the situation and I am confident we will use it as a learning experience.

On a lighter note, we really do have a lot to be thankful for. With only two days this week, we spent that time reflecting on some of those things. The students have created 5 paragraph essays on what they are thankful for, and here are some of the things they are thankful for.

Family(parents, brothers, sisters, etc.)
Friends (Maggie, etc.)
Pets (dogs, cats, baby alligator)
Music
Sports (basketball, ballet, football, etc.)
Soldiers

I hope everyone has a great break and I will see you Monday!

Celebrations!!!!
-100% on Unit 13 Spelling Test
Hannah C., Hannah F., Matthew H., Julia, Brenna, Kevin, & Avarie
-Lanie has made 5 goals in the last 2 hockey games!
-Julia finished Otter Creek Multiplication!
-We read 3366 minutes last week! That is the most for the whole year!
-Basketball started for a number of the students in the class!
-Swimming is going very well for a number of students!
-We finished The Giver!
-We finished our memoirs!