Back from VACATION - 2/27

WELCOME BACK. I hope you all had a safe and restful break and are coming back re-energized as we head into "MCAS Season". I enjoyed a LOT of great walks with the dogs and had some of the best skiing in the past few years for a couple of days at Sunday River. It's amazing what these ski areas can do with man-made snow these days.

As we head into March we will be continuing our studies of Earth Processes, the Revolutionary War, and Ordered Pairs (in Math). We will be prepping for the ELA portion of MCAS by looking at questions from previous years and working together to develop strategies for reaching our potential on these assessments.

MCAS Testing starts the week of March 20th and runs through April 2nd for ELA. Math and Science & Engineering/Technology assessments will be administered between May 7th and 22nd.

I will be available for after school hours this week on Tuesday and Thursday from 3:15pm to 4:00pm. Hope to see you there.

Week of February 13th

Ah yes, the week of Valentine's Day. This should be a relatively active week as we head into the winter break next week. On Wednesday, February 15th, we will be having a quiz on Unit 9 in Math. The focus will be on division and what remainders mean. On Thursday, we will be having our final vocabulary quiz in Reading on the book Loser. Friday, February 17th, we will be having our final session with the representatives of Free Verse Poetry. The students in the fifth grade will be rehearsing poems written in the first three sessions and then they will be performing these poems for their fellow students in fifth grade. They have been enthusiastic participants and they are really looking forward to performing their poems as well as seeing what the other classes have been up to.

We also experienced Day 3 of Free Verse Poetry where we edited some of our "I Am" poems and presented them to the class. We then worked on and practiced our group "I Am" poems and presented those with the goal of demonstrating more expression and emotion in the presentations. Below are some photos from this workshop.

Poetry Slam Day 3

I hope you all have a happy and safe vacation.

Week of February 6th

Well, we made it through the past week of tests and workshops without a glitch. The class worked hard and stayed focused throughout. Thanks for putting forth such a strong effort.

During the week we enjoyed another visit from our visiting scientist, Patsy Eldridge, as she demonstrated to the entire fifth grade why we have seasons here on Earth. Ms. Eldridge headed-up four workshops, one for each 5th grade classroom, that included hands-on instruction and demonstrations using light meters and globes. Hopefully, we all left these workshops with this phrase on our minds: "the tilt of the Earth on its axis.



We also enjoyed the 2nd of 4 visits from Freeverse Poetry. The focus this week was performing as a group. Students wrote "I Am" poems as a group and performed them at the end of the workshop. The students worked hard and stayed focused while demonstrating a great deal of courage as they performed their poems.

The upcoming week should be a bit more on the "normal " side of things. We will be starting a new Unit in Math on Monday as we start working on more complex division problems. In Reading we will be continuing our work on Loser, by Jerry Spinelli. Our work in space continues in Science as we wrap up our Postcards from Space writing project and move on to Stars later in the week.

For Wednesday morning I will be looking for 2 volunteers who will attend the Principal's Council meeting at 8:15am. They will then report out to the class later in the day. We also have a full school assembly on Wednesday afternoon.

This is the last week for collecting for Littlebrook Village. Two volunteers from each class will deliver the donations to Littlebrook Village next week.

We are also running low on tissues if anyone wishes to make a donation moving forward.

I will be available on Tuesday and Thursday after school this week from 3:15 - 4:00 for homework assistance.