5-2 Updates ~ 10/20

Hello 5-2 Families ~

Hope you had a restful weekend...great weekend for board games and football :)

Important Dates

Cultural Arts Assembly: Spooky Hollow ~ Tuesday, October 22nd - Thanks to our PTA, our students will be enjoying a staged production of Sleepy Hollow on Tuesday morning in place of math class.

Science Behind Drugs ~ Thursday, October 24th - Science Behind Drugs is a program that presents the physiological dangers drug use can have on the body.  Here is a synopsis of the presentation:

Kids face tough decisions, especially regarding the issue of drug use. The newly designed “Science Behind Drugs and Prevention” program helps kids make healthy choices and lead a drug-free life.  The program uses research-proven effective, interactive teaching methods. The neurological effects of drug addiction are demonstrated using the “Reward Pathway” display in the transparent brain model. Addiction is defined and the underlying neurological response to drugs that leads to addiction.

Program Goals:
Students will…

1. Increase knowledge about drugs and their affects on total wellness (physical, mental social, emotional) with intense focus on neuroscience.
2. Feel empowered to take personal responsibility for increasing their total wellness and increase disapproval of alcohol and other drug use
3. Develop strategies/tools to make healthy decisions and explore alternatives to alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use/abuse.

NOTE: In response to the Chicago area heroin crisis, this class will include a component about heroin prevention. The Reed Hruby Prevention Program focused specifically on heroin will be available to the schools in the fall of 2013.

Open House ~ Thursday, October 24th at 6:30pm - please plan to enjoy of for an evening at our annual Open House!  Students have fun showing their parents around the classroom and building, and it's a great chance for a chat :)

Halloween Party ~ Thursday, October 31st at 1:30pm - Our Room Moms have been very busy planning an exciting party for your children - a great big thank you to Mrs. Orzechowski, Mrs. Tader, and Mrs. Thompson!  I will email a letter and post a letter on this blog about the foods that will be served at the party, along with our food policy.  You should have seen a permission slip come home about lunch on Halloween Day - please return this permission slip as soon as possible so that I know your child's plans for that day.  Our Annual Halloween Parade begins at 1:30pm, with the party immediately following.  We look forward to seeing you all along the route!  Pleae refer to the Olive Blog for more information on rain plans, as well as halloween costume expectations.

Jesie Chinese Delegation
5-2 was privileged to have the Jesie Chinese Delegation visit our room on Friday afternoon.  We were chosen to demonstrate the use of technology in a classroom with Common Core Standards instruction.  While it was a little strange to have about a dozen adults walking around the room and taking pictures of their activities, your children were phenominal hosts as they paused to explain the activities they were engaged in when asked questions.  They were respectful and helpful - I was so proud and impressed to watch them represent the Olive community to our international visitors :)

Math

My math class continues to work on geometric concepts in unit 3.  Tomorrow, we will be our Re-teach/Game Day - once every unit, we take a break in the middle of the unit to re-teach and solidify concepts that have been taught earlier in the unit.  It gives me the opportunity to work in small groups with students who struggle with concepts, and gives other students the opportunity to strengthen their skills with games.  On these days, students are also assigned the Open Response problems as homework.  Several students have brought in notes from parents about the difficulty of these problems, so I thought I would take a moment to comment on these problems.  These are intended to be challenging problems that require students to push their thinking outside the box.  I assure you that they are 5th grade level problems, and our students have been solving them in 5th grade for quite some time...so they are grade level appropriate.  The most important element of these problems is that students become comfortable with annotating their thinking as they work to solve the problem, not just that they get the correct answer.  Let them struggle with the problem, and write down the step they took to think through the problems.  Some strategies for helping them include:  have them re-read the problem a couple of times and identify what they are being asked to do, then have them re-word the problem.  Have them identify the important information that they know, then have them try a strategy to solve the problem.  Don't solve the problem for them, or they lose the opportunity to develop those important problem-solving skills.  Finally, rest assured that we always go through the problem together the following morning.  If they fail to answer it properly, they are always given another opportunity to solve the problem on their own after our class discussion.

Science

We finished our Human Body unit this week with a Final Unit Assessment.  I was SO pleased with their scores on this assessment!  It looks like many students learned from their struggle with the mid-unit assessment, and worked to develop their study skills - an important 5th grade skill!  I will be sending home these scores for a sign and return this week - please look for them.  You will only receive the written portion of the test, but the score includes their mimio test results as well.  If you would like to see their mimio test results specifically, please email me and I will send you an electronic copy.

Reading

With our short week, students were given another opportunity to examine the elements of a drama titled Study Skills.  They've enjoyed the ability to read through and determine the theme of these dramas for the past two weeks.  Next week, we will return to our Treasures curriculum with unit 2, where we will intensify our instruction on the comprehension strategy of inferencing.

Writing

We took a break from our WEX curriculum on Personal Narratives this week and learned to develop strong, descriptive language with a study on poetry this past week.  Students wrote Acrostic and Haiku poems about autumn - we will further our study of poetry by writing Diamante and Cinquain poems this coming week.  Students will be able to choose their favorite poem to polish up for final publication later this week - hopefully we will have them published for Open House!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  Have a fantastic week ~

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.