No School November 5th Please do not forget! There is no school for students, Tuesday November 5th. November 5th is Election Day! Remember, Democracy is a verb. This Week's Learning TargetsMath: This week, students will be exploring multiplying and dividing with decimal numbers. Students will use visual models of decimal numbers to support their thinking. Students will practice separating physical decimal models into multiple groups and using repeated subtraction to remove decimal amounts from a total amount.
Support At Home: Allow the student to practice making change at the grocery store. Have the student record the list of items purchased at the grocery store. The student can total the amount by hand to find the subtotal for the shopping trip. Reading: Students will practice identifying and comparing informational text structures. This skill is important because it allows students to identify common patterns in ways that materials are presented. When students begin to notice these patterns while reading, they are able to make connections and understand the relationship between concepts. This helps them retain the information and helps develop critical thinking skills. Support At Home: Allow students to read newspaper articles or informational magazine articles. Have students identify the text structures the author uses. Students can also look for cause and effect relationships, compare and contrast relationships, sequences, and problem and solution relationships. Writing: We have been practicing using various text structures for informational writing. Students have written paragraphs in the cause and effect, compare and contrast, and chronological order text structure. This week, students will begin working on their first research project. We will cover the basics of research, selecting a topic, and creating a basic bibliography (source list). Students may begin writing this week if time allows. Students will be required to have a least 1 print based source, like a book or an encyclopedia. The overall unit will probably take us about 4 weeks to complete. During that time students should write at least a five paragraph essay, but no more than 1,200 words. Following this unit, students will work on creating multiple evidence based essays for the rest of the quarter. Support At Home: Take your student to the public library so they have access to additional materials. Students may use their Cobb County Student ID as their library card. Have your student multiple books on their topic. You can help them look for different types of relationships between the text presented, like cause and effect, compare and contrast, or problem and solution. Students also should be able to fully describe their topic as well. Social Studies: Students will finish up their unit on the Turn of the Century, and students will begin their unit on WWI and the Roaring 20s. This week will focus on the causes of WWI and how the United States became involved in the conflict. Support At Home: Subscribe to the Oversimplified channel on Youtube. Allow students to watch the videos on WWI at home. The videos are broken into pt.1 and pt.2 and in total are about fifteen minutes long. Discuss what your student has learned together. Science: This week students will dig deeper into plant and animal classification. Students will create a hierarchy to show how the branches of classification are related to one another as well as a table to help them classify animals and plants themselves. Support At Home: Watch the Happy Learning Videos on the classification page together. Discuss the similarities and differences between different categories (eg. Birds and Reptiles). Reminders:
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Good Morning!
It is our last week of our first nine weeks! We are officially 1/4 of the way through the school year! Thank you all so much for your hard work and keep it up!
In Math, we will continue to work on reading, writing and comparing decimals. We will also introduce rounding and adding and subtracting decimal numbers. In Reading, we will be wrapping up our Esperanza Rising unit, including our final assessment and completing our projects. Students will also begin working on reading informational text. In Social Studies, students are wrapping up our work on inventors and we will finish up our Turn of the Century Unit by exploring the United States becoming a world power. In Science, students will begin learning about classifying plants and animals. In Writing, students will turn in their completed Inventor News Articles and Cattle Trail Narratives this week. We will continue to work on the RACE strategy for answering constructed response questions. Students are also learning about prepositions and their purpose within a text. In Spelling: Week 5 Sight words, suffix -able, and academic vocabulary 1. beetle 2. jewelry 3. avenue 4. climb 5. wrote 6. Minnesota 7. continue 8. launch 9. active 10. passive 11. sprint 12. allowable 13. suitable 14. distinguishable 15. preferable 16. debatable 17. matter 18. gaseous 19. solidify 20. petroleum Have a wonderful week! Mrs. Barbosa Good Morning!
In Math: Students will begin learning about decimals. We will work on reading, writing, comparing, and rounding decimal numbers. In ELA: Students will complete the Cattle Trails Narratives and begin work on several short informational pieces. In Reading: Students are working on their Esperanza Rising Projects and we will begin working on our informational reading standards. In Social Studies: Students will continue to learn about the great inventors and we will discuss the United States rise as a political and military power. In Science, we are beginning our next unit on Classification of Living things. Week 4 Spelling Words Sight words, suffix -ible, and academic vocabulary 1. surprise 2. French 3. hesitate 4. tenant 5. exactly 6. remain 7. beige 8. breathe 9. succeed 10. horrible 11. tangible 12. gullible 13. possible 14. permissible 15. comprehensible 16. invisible 17. specific 18. function 19. ancient 20. cliff Have a great week! -Miss Dobbins Good Afternoon!
Today, I just want to drop a few friendly reminders for you all! Next week is fall break, so that means there will not be any school! I hope this break is a relaxing time for you and your family. Our school is participating in a peanut butter drive sponsored by the Cheesecake Factory. This food drive benefits the local Feeding America chapter. Our class is part of a competition to see which class can bring the most peanut butter jars. The size and brand of the jar does not matter, so please consider donating a couple of jars to this wonderful cause! The top three classes will receive a prize and get a cheesecake party! My class won last year, so I'd love to have another great turn out this year. Also, we are about to begin our reading competition, Buzzer Readers (formerly Jacket to Jacket). In this competition, students record the number of pages they read each day. Please help your student document their progress with the reading logs that will be sent home when we return to school. The program runs from Oct 1-Oct 31. Our goal in our class is for each student to have 5,000 pages read during the month of October. Please support this goal by having students read at home for 20 minutes each evening. Students will also be allowed time at school to read independently. You can also count books you read together! Check out these helpful hints for parents to support their student's reading ability at home. Finally, students have been assigned their long term project for Esperanza Rising. It will be due October 11th. I meant to give students their graphic organizers to get started with their project over break, but time ran out before I could distribute them. Since this is the case, I will post them here for your reference, and they will be available to students when they arrive after break. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me a message on class dojo or comment below. I will be available throughout the break to answer your questions and offer guidance. -Miss Dobbins Hello All!
It's our last week before fall break! Remember, next week there will be no school! In Math, we will be wrapping up unit one. Students will review, practice and extend concepts we've already covered this year in preparation for our unit test. Test will be Wednesday. After that, we will begin our work with reading, writing, and expressing decimals. In Reading, we are finishing up our novel study. Students should begin thinking about their novel study projects. Fall break is a great time to get started on these, and parents can help as much as they'd like. In Writing, students are still working on Narrative Writing. Also, students will focus this week on summary writing as well. In Social Studies, students are learning about Industrialization. Students may also make corrections this week to any quizzes they did not perform well on. In Science, we are finishing Constructive and Destructive forces this week. Students will be tested on Friday. Our spelling words for this week are: Sight words, suffix -able, and academic vocabulary 1. constant 2. Africa 3. killed 4. melody 5. bottom 6. Florida 7. secret 8. tumble 9. afterwards 10. cathedral 11. desirable 12. excitable 13. breakable 14. notable 15. tolerable 16. questionable 17. hundredth 18. thousandth 19. tenth 20. millionth Have a great week! -Miss Dobbins Good Evening!
This week has been a busy one. With the four day week, I feel like I hardly blinked and here we are at the weekend again. This week we explored the life of a cowboy on the cattle trails, talked about how character's change in response to the challenges they face, and worked on multiplication and division in math. Next week we will be completing the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). This test is used to help determine class placement and provide a grade level equivalent for your student's progress in their educational career. During this time, we ask that students arrive at school early in between 7:15-7:30. This allows students to eat breakfast, go to the restroom, and prepare for testing in the classroom. Students will not be able to enter the classroom after testing has begun. Students that arrive after testing has begun will make up the tests during the next make up window. In Math, we will continue to work on multiplication and division problem solving. Students will review decimal place value, rounding, and comparing numbers with decimals. In Reading, students will examine the next two chapters of Esperanza Rising. Students will learn how character's responses to challenges can help us identify the theme of the story. In Social Studies, student will take a quiz Monday over the Cattle Trails and the Transcontinental Railroad. Accurately complete the Think and Review Questions from Trails and Rails and turn it in by Tuesday for an extra 5 points on your test. In Science, students will continue studying landforms, constructive and destructive forces, and human interventions and their impact on the environment. Many students did not perform well on our science quiz this week, please make sure students spend 10-15 minutes studying every night. Progress Reports Today, we distributed progress reports. Please sign and return them by Wednesday, September 11. I'll send a progress update in about two weeks. Spelling List #2 Sight words, suffix -ent, and academic vocabulary 1. ashamed 2. indeed 3. Tennessee 4. someone 5. sweater 6. mansion 7. instant 8. wonder 9. smile 10. irritate 11. plunge 12. absent 13. excellent 14. reverent 15. impatient 16. stringent 17. hydrogen 18. molecule 19. dioxide 20. element Have a great weekend! -Miss Dobbins Hello all! We have officially finished our first month of school, and we could not be more excited about this year. After a few hiccups at the beginning of the year, like not having agendas (AHHHHH!) or missing communication folders, we are finally implementing our homework, spelling work, and extra credit opportunities. Looking forward to next week: In Math, we will continue to work with our standard algorithm for multiplication, and we will be beginning our standard for division. For this standard, students should not be using only the standard algorithm (think long division process), but should be working with flexible AND multiple strategies. Please refer to the page on division under AC math for more information and examples. We are almost done with our first unit, which covers whole numbers. Soon, we will begin decimals and their operations, so look for opportunities to use decimal numbers in real life with your students. Some examples might include shopping or sports averages. In Reading, we will continue with our study of Esperanza Rising. Students will be working on identifying "big metaphors" or symbols within the text and how they relate to Esperanza's journey and the theme of the text. Students will also be working on identifying the characters' problems and their responses to them in order to determine themes within the text. In addition, we will continue to focus on quoting accurately from the text to support our inferences and statements. You can support your student in this skill by asking them questions about what they read like, "Which part of the text helped you understand how the character was feeling?" or "How does the author show us that the character is __________________?" In Writing, students have been practicing paragraph writing and summaries. These two skills are the foundational skills for our writing units. You can encourage your student to complete "quick writes" at home. This strategy works best when students have a good basic knowledge of a subject. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and have your student write a summary of a book or chapter they read or have them write an informational paragraph about a topic we're learning about in science and social studies. Encourage students to use proper grammar, capitalization, and punctuation! We will be moving on to working on narrative and creative writing. This week, we are beginning a narrative writing piece about a cowboy or cowgirl during the Cattle Drives at the turn of the century. Our focus will be on using descriptive details, SHOW don't tell (avoiding summarization), and planning the action. To support your student, you can brainstorm ideas with your child for this writing piece and read books or watch movies about cowboys and life on the plain. In Social Studies, we are studying the cattle drives, industrialization, immigration, and important advancements at the Turn of the Century (around 1900). Students have a weekly reader, like a magazine, and access to the texts online. Some big ideas we will be focusing on are how life changed for the "average" American during this time period, why people move and migrate, as well as examining how racism shaped the United States during this time period. In Science, students have been exploring constructive and destructive forces in nature. A constructive force is anything that builds or creates land mass, while a destructive force breaks down the surface of the Earth. Some topics that we are working on right now are weathering, erosion, deposition, earthquakes, tectonic plates and faults, and volcanoes. Students have access to many resources on this topic including the online textbook, discovery education streaming, national geographic kids, kids infobits, and pebblego science. Tuesday, we will have our first quiz on this topic. Extra credit is available for students to complete over the holiday weekend, but it is not a mandatory assignment. (Science Textbook p.116-120 and 140-142) All pages must be complete and accurate to receive the extra credit. Also, next week will be our first week with spelling words. I encourage you to practice them with your child each evening. You can have them bounce a ball back and forth with you as you each take turns saying a letter of the word or have them jump as they spell out each consonant and squat for every vowel. The list of words for this next week is included below. Spelling Words 1. comic 2. ostrich 3. Connecticut 4. insult 5. grumble 6. gallop 7. hurry 8. distinct 9. contestant 10. defendant 11. assistant 12. brilliant 13. compliant 14. extravagant 15. ignorant 16. consonant 17. applicant 18. migration 19. route 20. trace Important Dates and Upcoming Events:9/2- Labor Day/No School
9/3- Science Quiz (Constructive and Destructive Forces) 9/6- Progress Reports 9/9- Food Bank (2:45-food runs out) 9/13-9/21- IOWA Test of Basic Skills 9/23-9/27- Fall Break 10/11- Esperanza Rising Novel Study Project Due (More Details to Come) If you have any questions, you may send me a message on Class Dojo or email me at [email protected] Happy Friday and have an awesome long weekend! -Miss Dobbins Hello, and welcome to the best year of elementary school! (At least that's my opinion!) I am so excited to have you all in my class and look forward to a productive year. This year we will tackle many topics and challenges. We will all learn and grow together. Our class will be a challenging one, and I know that each and every one of you can rise to the occasion.
This blog will be the primary form of communication from me throughout the year. I will send home graded work about every 2 weeks, progress reports every 4 1/2 weeks, and report cards each quarter. When these items are sent home, a parent signature is required. It is my hope that each time grades or graded work come home that students and parents will review together and discuss goals for improvement, while celebrating student successes. This website also has resources to use throughout the year, as well as access to our adopted online curriculum. It is still a work in progress, so if there are any resources that you wish to see, that have not made their way to the website yet, please let me know! Each subject has its own tab at the top of the screen. To access general information about the course, please click on the subject. If you hover over each subject, you will find links to information about each individual topic we cover as they become available. I hope that this website will be a great resource for parents and students throughout the year. -Mrs. Barbosa Hello All! I hope that you are all enjoying your Winter break! Winter break is an excellent time to learn and explore many topics that students have an individual interest in or extending classroom learning by doing extra activities. I wanted to provide you all with some ideas to keep our students academically focused while out of school.
Miss Dobbins's Challenge
Good Morning!
Now that we have finally settled back into our routine, I'd like to take a moment just to update you on things going on in our classroom! Since being back, our students have completed their novel study projects, began writing biographies on influential leaders of the Roaring 20's, and have planned and are working on creating a project to show and explain how plant and animal cells are different from each other. The students have really enjoyed having challenging projects to complete while still being able to make choices about how to demonstrate what they know. In math, we have wrapped up our unit on fractions and many students have demonstrated mastery of our standards in this unit. We will continue practicing these challenging concepts in math class in small groups and on Khan Academy, but I encourage you to practice with your child as well. Students may practice any skills in their MyMath text book or on Khan Academy. Another great resource is IXL, which has family memberships starting at $10 a month for one subject or $20 a month for all of your core classes. This is a great alternative to getting a tutoring service if you're looking for additional help outside of the school to help prepare for Milestones or to review and stay fresh on our standards for the year. In the next few weeks, students will begin several new units. Please see the list below for more information about upcoming topics in each of our subjects!
If you would like to volunteer to help during one of these units, have ideas for activities, work in a related field, or just want to come read and engage with our students during any one of these units, please let me know! I would love to have some more parent involvement within our classroom. Also, don't hesitate to send me an email, class dojo message, or comment on this post if you have questions about the standards or topics being covered. I would love to help! -Miss Dobbins |
Mrs. Barbosa5th Grade AC Teacher Archives
November 2019
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