T1W1 Recap

We had a great first week and we are off to a productive start to the 2016-17 school year. Our primary focus was to explore our Unit of Inquiry and Central Idea -- How We Organize Ourselves and Processes and Procedures Create Structures That Develop Order in Our World.  

See below for a few details about how we completed some of our work this week.  Please feel free to look at the pictures with your child and discuss the questions.  They should be able to share with you what we did in class and their own reflections.

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People organize themselves and establish rules and expectations.  On our first day together students discussed the similarities and differences with their peers.  They also reflected on MY teacher goal of having safe and stable learning environment.  On our second day, students discussed how we should communicate in class depending on the task at hand.  They also had a chance to participate in the paper airplane challenge.  The goal of that activity was to see how important communication is when working with others.

Ms. Smith came to talk to us about our iPad agreements.  The forms will come home in the Monday communication folders.  We had our training with Ms. Niemeyer's class...it was a packed!

Reading:  What are the parts of a literary story (fiction)?  How can we understand the literature we read?  How can we dig deeper and understand the essential literary elements?  We began reading The Giver this week and students will use that book, along with some other texts, to meet the 5th grade literature standards.

Science:  What's the purpose of science?  What is the function of organization IN science?  Why do scientific beliefs and methods change over time?

Writing:  How can we organize our writing?  How can we use the writing process to express our thoughts in a detailed, factual, and logical manner?  

Social Studies:  What rights should people have?  What are the differences between rights and responsibilities?  How does the Bill of Rights help U.S. citizens to organize themselves?  What's the purpose of the Bill of Rights?  We will continue exploring our Constitutional rights next week.  

Math:  During Math this week students took a pre-assessment so that I can organize them into learning groups.  Additionally, we spent our math time working on some team building activities and Ms. Theisen, who will be my math co-teacher this year, completed a fun decimal dice activity during one of our math times.

I like to believe that part of bringing order to our world involves being social and having fun.  We spent some time throughout the week getting to know each other.  

It's going to be an awesome year!