Expedition

Click on the link to watch a video and learn about the three Guiding questions we have been researching. A beautiful, creative job! 

Collaboration

This week to culminate our three guiding questions we created iMovies to share our thinking. Here is a link to one. We started by generating a student centered rubric. Click on the link to watch the video and learn about the three Guiding questions we have been researching. Lots of collaboration happening in Room 209. 

Ceres and I spent 2.5 hours on Saturday volunteering at the Oregon Food Bank. We are taking action for Jazzy. We are Crew, Not Passengers! 

Winter Party

Hello Parents!

Welcome to Ms. Doolittle’s 5^th grade Winter Party!  We have many fun winter activities planned for our classroom party this coming Friday!  We welcome all parents to come celebrate and volunteer if you’re able to… 

Here’s the party specifics:

Date:  12.18.15

Party Set up:      12:45

Party Start:         1:05

Party Clean up:   2:10

Winter Stations:

v  Candy Cane Limbo

v  Rudolph Reindeer Ring toss

v  Snowballs

v  Bell Ornaments

v  Christmas Treats & Hot cocoa

Happy Holidays! From your party Coordinators – Alejandra & Jenny

Spelling

Dear Families,

I am using the Words Their Way spelling program to teach spelling. After giving students a diagnostic spelling test (of which they did not study for), I determined each child’s spelling level. After looking at what students know about spelling and noticing what their next step is, I have put them into spelling groups. I will be teaching them right at their developmental spelling level!

You should expect to see spelling sorts come home most Monday evenings. Please help your child practice their sort, and their spelling of each word. Testing will be the last day of the week. They will get credit in both sorting and spelling their words correctly.

Monday: Remind your child to sort the words into categories like the ones we did in school. Your child should read each word aloud during this activity. Ask your child to explain to you why the words are sorted in a particular way-what does the sort reveal about spelling in general? Ask your child to sort them a second time as fast as possible. You may want to time them.

Tuesday: Do a “no-peeking” sort with your child. Use the categories from this week’s sort. Then mix the sort cards and call out a word without showing it to your child. Have your child point or say the category the word should go in. Lay it down and let your child move it if he or she is wrong. Repeat if your child makes more than one error.

Wednesday: Go on a word hunt with your child. Read aloud from newspaper, magazines, or books. Have your child point out words that are examples of the word pattern of the week.

Thursday: Do a writing sort to prepare for the Friday test. As you call out words in random order your child should write them in categories. Call out any words your child misspells a second or third time.

Thank you for your support. Together we can help you child make valuable progress.

Sincerely,
Ms. Doolittle

Week of December 4

Expedition: Students this week worked through their simulation. We are building colonies, trading, and expanding our land base. Students are working collaboratively and so engaged. In math, we are dividing decimals. In reading workshop, we are learning how to paraphrase and annotate text. All students read an article. With the help of a rubric students guided their learning by finding a main idea, supporting details, and a summary. All students were asked to quote accurately from the text and give a minute long discussion on the gist of their text. We started a "Passion" time, which we will have each Friday. Other names for this include "Genius Hour" or "20% time". The students and I read, "What Do You Do With An Idea?" and talked about essential questions. We looked at Blooms Taxonomy as a guide to what I expect of them. More synthesizing and analyzing. For more information look at, What is Genius Hour? We ended the week with a Malala party discussing peace. 

week of November 16

  This week, we started on the new expedition called "Colonial America".  To begin, we got into five groups and started planning and got organized on what to pack for the adventure we were going to start.  We wrote down how much miles we needed to go and organized everything. After each round went, finally a winner came. The group got to choose which land to claim. We couldn't wait for what will happen next, but before that, we had a little break for specials. After coming back from specials, we all went back to our expeditionary learning. We all catched up on our cargo, and got back to work. We started reading an article about an explorer who had some serious situations from running out of supplies. It was that we were supposed to learn that before we started sailing, we needed to make sure we had enough supplies, which we at first, didn't. Now everything is ready, we are very excited about what will happen next!
By: Yunah

Week of November 9th

       In this week we have been working on various things. At the begenning of the week we set goals,  in social studies we took gallery walks in our five classes learning about revolution. It took two and a half days to complete. After we came up with different big ideas about what we thought  it meant, most used the word "change".  We have been working on finishing our personal narrtive writing, it took a few days but we finally completed them! In Mrs. Doolittle's math class we have been working on several problem sets and exit tickets. Overall this week was a fun adventure for all of us, we can't wait for what's ahead!

Week November 2

             This week we have been super busy in all subjects.  In math, we have been working hard on learning how to multiply decimal numbers by multi-digit whole numbers. In social studies, we have been creating bio cards about an early explorer. That was my favorite part of the week!  We have started soccer in P.E., and trading cards in art. We have also just finished Star Girl. I would seriously recommend reading it. It's a great book.

              We are doing Sparrow Club again! This year the sparrow is Jazzie. She is a lovely two year old girl. Sadly, she was diagnosed with blood cancer. We have to do something good for the world for one hour. Each hour we work, we earn ten dollars for Jazzie. Our class goal is ten hours.
By Mira

Great Math Resources

For Parents: Great Minds 

Find 5th Grade on the left hand column and then click (2) Multiplying and Dividing Whole Numbers and Decimals. 

Our short week of school

Well its already the 7th week of school and only 11 more days until Halloween what will you be? Ok, now on to our week. We had Art as our specials on Tuesday. In social studies we are talking about Native American tribes such as Aztec, Inca, Pueblo and the Algonquins. We are making T shaped papers and writing about our tribes on them and we are making pictures on them. They are called a Codex. Monday, we also switched math classes because we finished module 1. Now we are on module 2. On Tuesday, we have P.E for our specials I am really looking forward to that. We are playing ultimate Frisbee, I think we will play some more of that today. Ok its now Wednesday. We had music as our specials today we also had vision tests. Well that is basically what has been keeping us busy. Hopefully everyone has a great 4 day weekend. We also have conferences over the next two days as well. Hopefully you've been doing great in class. Well that is the update on this week hopefully this update on the week has helped you have a great weekend!

                                                                       BY:HUMAYL

 This is are 6th week of school we have been learning a lot already this week. We have been doing goal setting because we are doing student led on the 22 and the the 23 of October. 
We are also learning about explorers and about Christopher Columbus also we learned about text-to-text , personal narative and partner chats. And our jog - A - Thog permission slip. And on Friday we did black and white day. We had an all school gathering on Friday. We also did a vocabulary test. Next week, we are doing another test on vocabulary. On Friday we filled in our sharing journal. Every Friday we write in our sharing  journal so make sure to check your child's folder, sharing journal, planners and make sure they read 20 minutes every night . 

                                     By,
                   Taelynn :)

BizTown

So far this year our 5th grade class has been doing pretty well. Just last week we had Biz Town, an article from last week probably stated some information about that 5th grade field trip. And I think it is safe to say that this is one of the best school years I have had. Its also going to get so much better with Thanksgiving break right around the corner. Math has been going pretty good some of the math classes are ready for module-2, and have already taken their end of module Assessment. By Gavin

We learned about an artist, James Lavadour. He is a local Oregonian. Ms. Hersen came to our class and spent an hour teaching us about his print making. See the pictures below.