Let's Get Fired Up!

Science Fair Success!

We were so impressed with our students' science fair projects this year. Thank you for the effort your families put forth. We know it is a lot of work to get a project completed! Here are some of our projects.

End of the Year Expectations

With the end of the year fast approaching, we understand that the weekly responsibilities of our students may get harder to manage from home. However, we want to encourage our learners to continue strong work and study habits through the end of the year. We have many fun activities planned and would hate for students to miss out because they are finishing class work.

Weekly writing homework turn-in has been pretty strong, but nightly math assignments and reading logs are starting to be more challenging to the kids. They also need to have a parent sign/return the Fox Report every Tuesday. If you are not seeing a Fox Report, please check with your child or contact one of the teachers; we are sending them home every Monday evening.

State Capitol Visit

We had a wonderful time at the state capitol on Friday. The tour was very well done, and the view from the top of the building was beautiful. Thank you so much to our families that sent money in to help cover the cost of busing and/or who helped chaperon our student groups. Here are a couple of great shots from our trip (thank you Ivy for your photos):

Viewing the Pioneer statue from the rooftop

Sitting at the governor's ceremonial desk

Oregon Garden Call Out

On June 3rd, we will be visiting the beautiful Oregon Gardens. We are looking for parent volunteers that are available to chaperon the whole day (7:50-2:20). Only our class is attending, so seating on the bus ride will be much more comfortable. If you are available to help, please let Mrs. Harrington or Ms. Kinsman know through email or with a telephone call.

While we are on the Topic of Gardens

Do you live near the school and love to water plants? Well, we have a job for you! Over the summer we need some helpful families to water the plants in our school garden. If you are interested in helping, please contact Mrs. Harrington or Ms. Kinsman. We are setting up a schedule soon. 

Great Sites to Learn More About the 13 Original Colonies

Today we start a new research project.  Below are a list of student friendly websites that will help in the research.  This is a team project.  Teams of 4 will work together to create a poster of one of the three early colonial regions.  Once finished we will post pictures of amazing projects.

http://www.ops.org/elementary/catlin/Portals/0/Teachers/T_Hagen_Suzanne/north.pdf

http://www.lcps.org/cms/lib4/VA01000195/Centricity/Domain/4153/Group%20-%20infosheet.pdf

https://sites.google.com/site/theamericancolonies/southern-region-1

http://www.solpass.org/6ss/Standards/standard_us1.5b.htm

http://mrnussbaum.com/13colonies/13regions/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw9pw8rIDlU      Middle Colonies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ScZh2-QLOE   New England Colonies

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3KAOWye1AM   Southern Colonies

Help!!!!!!!!

Our class got a grant this year and with that grant our awesome teachers got us all Kindles! Some of us Paperwhites and others got Kindle wireless.It is so fun reading on an electronic book instead of a paper book.

Next week is the science fair but the project is due tomorrow, April 18th. Our class is going on a field trip on the 25th. We need money for the bus, so please bring in money for the field trips. We also need tissues for our class as we have none. Thank you!

By kali

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Awesomeness in an Awesome Way

Hey my unicorns! Its me, Michele, from Ms.Kinsman and Mrs.Harrington's 5th grade class. As you magical critters should know, we are having a field trip to the Capitol. Right now, we need more money in order to go. We would truly appreciate if you peeps gave up some LOOT. PLEASE! We also need tissues to clean our sniffers. If y'all Leprechauns can bring in a box or seven, us unicorns we would truly appreciate that.

Also, we started the OAKS math test today, April 8th. Our math teachers are suggesting to have a calculator handy; we are allowed to use them during the math test! If you don't have a calculator, Mrs.H & Ms.K have some we can borrow. We appreciate your effort forever and always.

Thanks for taking your time to read this blog post.THANKS unicorns! The rainbows will grant you a wish for being awesome and checking out our blog post.

Your awesomeness,                    
Michele

Teacher's Note: In order to encourage our students to be active and engaged writers, we are going to allow Michele to add her personal, "magical" touches to this blog post. It's unique style will hopefully catch the attention of our readers and bring about Kleenex donations! -Ms. Kinsman

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E-Reading in 5th Grade: Getting Started with Kindles

Now that our students have been using their Kindles for nearly a month, I think it is a great time to reflect on the benefits and new-found struggles of "e-reading". 

The students were very excited when we received the Kindles. They literally could not wait to get their hands on the new technology. However, a lot of our students had unexpected reactions to the devices. For instance, some really struggled with the touch screen technology; a challenge I would not have expected given the tech experience most of our kids seem to have these days. The Kindles rely on a much more "intuitive" touch screen approach, which means that there is not a button for turning pages, accessing the menu, or returning to the home screen. Instead, you have to remember which part of the screen to touch to access those functions. The ten students that had been assigned the older model Kindles, without the touch screens, had a much easier time navigating the tools.

After about an hour becoming accustomed to the new technology, the students were ready to start shopping. We allowed the kids to choose one book of their choice from the Amazon store. I encouraged them to use the rating and recommendation tools from Amazon, and we also had the old fashioned Scholastic book orders to help them out. I was impressed with our students' abilities to choose high-quality and interesting titles. The kids also learned about samples, and had a great time downloading a few pages of books that caught their interests. 

That night I was able to easily purchase the titles, after a quick support email to Whispercast. Luckily our school has set aside quite a bit of funds to help enrich our classroom libraries. Because this money is available, purchasing new titles has been fairly easy. I also learned that each purchase has to be made separately, and loaded onto the specific device. Amazon has amazing customer support and has been crucial in helping us learn to manage the Kindles. 

I would love to include a picture of our students reading on the devices, but I keep forgetting! I PROMISE that the next post will feature our kids enjoying their reading. We will also share some of the ways we are using the Kindles to help with instruction.