Room 20 Classroom Notes May 13-17

Good week to you all. Thank you to the several volunteers who notified me of your availability for the end of the year party on June 14^th. If anyone else is interested in helping out for this 5th grade tradition, please contact me.  In math this week, we are presenting and playing student created board games that reinforce concepts such as adding, subtracting and multiplying fractions, working with decimals and large number calculations.  We also received raw data from the walk and bike team and created graphs based on the school wide data count for the different modes of transportation that students took to school.  We will be creating different graphs every Friday as posters and digital representations via spreadsheets and using chart wizard.  This is important for students to learn how to manipulate, analyze,  and visually present data. In reading, we have two groups studying the American Revolution.  One group is reading a  non-fiction book on early American group while the other is reading the book “Woodsrunner” by Gary Paulsen.  Students will not only read and answer questions based on these books but have projects connected to them and early American history. We will also begin learning about the United States geography again by studying various Native American tribes. It is my intention to emphasize how natural surroundings determined the way of life for these tribes, for instance, if you were a tribe in the NW you would be using the cedar tree. If you were living in the southwestern region you would use the natural materials available for all ways of life.  Students have finished their literary analysis for “Passage to Freedom”.  Room 20 did an outstanding job writing their 5 or more paragraph essays based on various thematic conflicts that arose within the story.  Please have your child share their essay with you via their google docs account. Homework this week will include math review and a fractions activity based on recipes found in magazines.  Students will also have another weekly essay due on Friday.  Students have begun presenting special book report projects and we will continue throughout the week. We also need T-Shirt sizes for end of the year. T-Shirts will be paid for. Please indicate student size, if you have not already done so. Thanks!