Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution

This week, we are starting Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution by Jean Fritz.  The book is a great story about how the Constitution was written during the summer of 1787.  The Framers are brought to life and are described as real people.  The events are written in a way that fifth graders can understand.  This is the sixth year that I have used the book with my group of fifth graders, and every year they seem to like the book, but most importantly, they remember the history!

I start by dividing the book into five sections.  The content is so rich, that the shorter sections allow us to really dive in and understand the story each day.  We read and discuss the book together and they complete comprehension questions each day.

At the beginning of the week, I also hand out a Spelling Activities page for the kids to use during the week.  There are only 12 words, but the kids are also required to learn their meanings, so 12 seems like plenty!

Once we finish the book, we review by completing a fill-in-the-blank summary of the story and by watching the video.  The video is available on YouTube here.  The video is basically a reading of the story with the illustrations in the background, but it provides a good review of the story.

I finish up the mini-unit on this book with a short quiz on the material.

This weekend, I’ve been cooped up working on school work, and I put together all of the materials I’ve created to use with the book into one packet of activities.  I even managed to get it posted on TPT!  If you’d like to check it out, it’s available here.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Last week was a busy one, with a holiday on Monday and a snow day on Wednesday, but we still did a lot to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Monday, we watched a video called Mighty Times: The Children’s March.  It focused on the Children’s March in Birmingham, Alabama in May of 1963.  The event caught the eye of the nation and led to President Kennedy publically supporting racial equality.  After the video, we had a discussion about the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King’s involvement in the movement.  The kids learned a lot and had TONS of great questions.  Perhaps my favorite question was, “Why are we just now learning about this? I mean, I have never heard of any of this!”  It was great to present fifth graders with information that they want to learn more about!

 

The video is available from the Zinn Education Project, but even better, it is available to educators for free, along with several other materials!  You can learn more about this video here and can learn more about their other products by browsing around the website.

On Tuesday, we did a close reading activity about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that I found from The Sweetest Thing.  You can find it on TPT here.  The kids enjoyed reading about Dr. King and about the progress of creating a history to remember him and his actions.  They also used those close reading skills that we have been practicing so hard!

 

On Thursday (snow/ice day on Wednesday), we did another close reading activity about Dr. King.  This one, I found from Fifth in the Middle,  You can find it on TPT here.  This time, the kids had to use text evident to create a timeline, to find cause and effect relationships, and to complete a writing activity.  This one seemed like more work to me, but again, the kids loved it.  They really got into the timeline activity and wanted to add more events that they knew should be added to the timeline.

Overall, it was a great week with a lot of learning about Martin Luther King, Jr.  And even better, the kids had fun learning!

A Peek at My Week: Back to School and Back to Blogging

It’s been a while since I last blogged…I had great intentions, but school and life got in the way.  This year, my goal is to stick with it!  I had great ideas for posts throughout the year, so this year, it is on!  I thought I’d start back with A Peek at My Week which is hosted by Mrs. Laffin’s Laughings.

My fifth grade team looks a little different this year, because one of our teammates retired two weeks ago.  The last two weeks have been a fury of interviews, hiring a new teammate, prepping my own room, and helping her move in.  So the stress level has been high to say the least.  But this is the first week of school, so I’m sure everyone’s stress level is at maximum levels! 

So here’s the peek at my week:

Monday: Open House
Open House at my school is a chance for kids to drop off their materials and meet the teacher.  So, tonight, I meet my 26 new kiddos and their families, and I’m super excited!

Tuesday: Teacher Work Day

A day filled with meetings, schedules, and paperwork…

Wednesday: First Student Day!
The first day is always filled with nerves (on our part and the kids'!), but I'm ready to start the year with my new batch of kids.  It will be sad to lose one of our team members, but I’m excited about the new teammate and a year of new opportunities.

Thursday: Day 2

Still working on some community building activities, but starting some curriculum too.

Friday: Day 3
By the end of the day, the kids will have most of their textbooks and will have had an introduction to every subject.  It should lead to a solid start of “real school days” on Monday.

That’s a look at my week…what are you looking forward to in terms of back to school?

A Peek at My Week (October 21-24)

Parent Teacher Conference week is over!  Friday I had 22 conferences starting at 7:30 and running pretty much nonstop until 3:30.  I did schedule myself a lunch break and had a 30 minute break in the afternoon, but I was exhausted by 3:30 when my last parent left!  This week should be much less stressful without conferences hanging over my head.

Since the long week has taken me away from the blog, I decided to link up with Mrs. Laffin’s Laughings for A Peek at My Week to get back to the blogging world.

Monday

FALL BREAK!!!!  I’m definitely in need of this break.  It’s been a crazy few weeks and I’m looking forward to some down time!

Tuesday
Math – Divide by Multiples of 10, 100, and 1000
Reading – Reading “Storm Warriors” from our Journeys book
English – Dependent and Independent Clauses
Social Studies – Review Chapter 5: The New England Colonies
Science – Introduce environments, ecosystems, and terrariums

Wednesday

Math – Divide by Multiples of 10
Reading – Write about nonfiction text and practice quoting from the text
English – Correlative Conjunctions
Social Studies – Chapter 5 Test

Thursday
Math – Two Digit Divisors
Reading – Vocabulary Strategies and DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time
English – Writing complex sentences with conjunctions
Social Studies – Settling the Middle Colonies
Science – Plant terrariums.  We will be planting corn, peas, wheat, and barley.

Friday

Math – One Digit Quotients
Reading – Book Talks and DEAR time
English – Grammar Quiz
Social Studies – A lesson on Citizenship with the theme of Justice.
Science – Journal about the process of building an ecosystem in our terrariums

That’s a peek at my week.  What is going on in your classroom?

A Peek at My Week (October 14-18)

This week is going to be a little crazy in my world because it is parent teacher conference time.  In preparing for conferences and working on report cards, my blogging has definitely taken a back seat. So today I decided to link up with Mrs. Laffin’s Laughings for A Peek at My Week.

Monday

Math – Zeros in the Quotient
Reading – Reading “Everglades Forever” from our Journeys book
English - Conjunctions
Social Studies – Settling New England
Science – Parts of plants

Tuesday

Math – Problem Solving: Draw a Picture and Write an Equation
Reading – Author’s Purpose activity that I got during a flash freebie sale from Lovin’ Lit.  It’s incredible!  You can buy it at TpT here
English – Conjunctions in Compound Sentences
Social Studies – Skill: Fact and Opinion
Science – Types of plants

Wednesday

Math – Chapter 4 Review
Reading – Reading “National Parks of the West” from our Journey’s book and comparing it to “Everglades Forever” from Monday
English – Subordinating Conjunctions
Social Studies – Life in the New England Colonies
Science – Photosynthesis

Thursday

Math – Chapter 4 Test
Reading – Vocabulary quiz, Book Talks (about Mysteries – our genre of the month), and DEAR (Drop Everything And Read time)
English – Writing sentences with conjunctions
Social Studies – New England’s Economy
Science – Transpiration and Respiration in plants

Friday

Parent teacher conferences from 7:15 – 3:30
 
That’s a very basic peek at my week.  What do you have planned?

Brainstorming: Stars

We have been studying space during our science time for a few weeks, and this week we focused on stars.  To get an idea of their prior knowledge, we started with a brainstorming session, and I was super impressed by the ideas they came up with.  Here is our web:

 

After brainstorming, we talked about several constellations and the names of the big stars in them.  I also showed them some pictures of different stars built to scale.  I can’t remember where my pictures originally came from, but they look very similar to these pictures, which I found here.

 

Saturday Snapshots September 28

This week has been absolutely crazy!  It started last weekend with my favorite festival – the Johnny Appleseed Festival.  The festival lasts all weekend and is a fall festival at its finest.  There are crafts, food booths, activities for kids, a “Settlers” demonstration area with cooking, spinning, and candle making demonstrations, and everyone working there has to dress in period appropriate clothes for pioneer times.  I snapped a few shots at the farmer’s market.

Then on Monday and Tuesday, we took the entire fifth grade to camp.  You can read about it here.  The camp is on a small lake in northern Indiana, and we are starting to finally experience fall.  Some of the leaves are changing and the weather is cooling down, so it was a beautiful time to be at camp.  This is what I woke up to Tuesday morning.

When we got back from camp, a box from Scholastic was waiting in my mailbox!  I got all of these books to add to my classroom library (and all of them came from points, so it didn't cost a dime!)

That’s all I’ve got photo-wise to sum up my week.  Now I’m off to catch up on some housework….

Have a great Saturday!